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EVERY DAY ESSAYS 




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Every Day 

Essays 



By 

Marion Foster Washburne 

Illustrated by 

Ruth Mary Hallock 



Rand, McNally & Company 
Chicago New York 



LIBRmKY nt CONGRESS 
Two Copies Receivod 

APR I 1904 

CopyiigM Entry 

CLaSS -^ XXe. No. 

COPY 8 






Copyright., iqo4 
By Marion Foster Washburne 



CKije ^anti - ^i;$lall» firese 



Chicago 



THE CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Every Morning's Comedy 7 

Mother and Child 30 

An Irresponsible Ramble 38 

Home 51 

The Day When Everythinjjf is Wrong . . 68 

Pictures of Peace ........ 87 

Coming Down in the World 102 

The Spirit of Christmas 115 

Aunt Catherine's Busy Day 133 

Types of Childhood i45 



EVERY DAY ESSAYS 

Every Morning's Comedy* 



I wonder why children wake so early In the 
morning? It isn't as if they were ready to 
go to bed early; on the contrary, one never 
finds the moment when they are willing to 
give up the joys of the waking world. These 
seem to have to be wrested from them by 
force, either by Mother Nature or by the less 
stern human mother. I have seen Jamie, for 
example, so drowsy that he would nod off be- 
tween mouthfuls at the table, yet when you 
asked him if he didn't want to go to sleep, 
he would resent the question as utterly unwar- 
rantable. And in the morning his blue eyes 
fly open as if the first touch of daylight were 
some magic talisman calling him back instant- 
ly from the land of dreams. 

One rather envies them the fresh eager- 
ness of this awaking, and perhaps one de- 
tects in it some dim reproach. Surely this is 
7 



8 Every Day Essays 

the way one should face the new day — with 
a confident wonder, a sweet readiness for all 
things it holds concealed. Instead, we elders 
cling to the day that has departed, and would 
fain prolong It. What a contrast now is the 
nursery, with the eastern sun pouring in at its 
windows, the white-robed children chatting 
gaily and irrepressibly in bed, to my own 
carefully darkened room, in which the heavy 
air of night still lingers ! I have waked the 
nurse, who sleeps more heavily than I do, and 
who yet wakes more cheerfully to the day's 
duties. Is it because her life Is simpler, I 
wonder? Yet it is surely less rich than mine. 
These are my children, not hers, and it is my 
dear husband whose morning nap I am try- 
ing to shelter in the darkened bed-room. She 
goes to bed early, to be sure — but if I did 
that, where would be the time I give to my 
husband? I am very tender in my thoughts 
of him until he turns restlessly and growls 
out something about wondering why two 
women can't keep those children quiet in the 
morning. 



Every Morning's Comedy 9 

I soothe him off to sleep again, but I am 
secretly a little indignant. Was it he or I, 
I ask myself as I brush my hair, that rose 
with the baby twice last night? In order to 
have the nurse fresh and serene during the 
day, I always take the baby at night. Be- 
sides, I sleep lighter, and that makes it pos- 
sible for me to watch him more carefully. 
She would never notice whether the tempera- 
ture changed or not, nor whether he threw 
the clothes off when he turned. The other 
children, too, are sure to get uncovered, and 
some one must cover them again. Their 
father says it is ail nonsense for me to prowl 
around so much at night — but it is easier than 
taking care of the children with heavy colds, 
and I notice that, if I am sick and unable, 
he prowls around a good deal himself. Men 
are always throwing out remarks about the 
way they would simplify the training of chil- 
dren, if they had It to do; but they don't 
seem eager to make opportunities for the dis- 
play of this wisdom, nor do they rise very 



10 Every Day Essays 

convincingly to such opportunities as unavoid- 
ably present themselves. 

Take this question of early rising, for ex- 
ample. Nelson (that's my husband) set him- 
self against it with all the force of a will that 
has made him fairly successful in business, 
after a rather hard childhood. He decided, 
with our first baby, that it was all nonsense 
to be waked every morning at five o'clock — 
Jamie was really a little extra bad. At first 
he was sure it was the morning light that 
roused him, and he had the windows of our 
room fitted with double shades to keep it out. 
But no matter which window we left open, 
the wind was sure to shift around to it in the 
night, and those double shades would dance 
a double shufile with the most heartless disre- 
gard for our feelings. I would know that 
they wakened Nelson by the way he would 
lie there elaborately still, breathing with 
careful regularity. I knew he wanted me to 
go and shut that window, but I have a little 
spirit left, and I thought it was enough for 
me to attend to the baby without running 



fc^^/^C'^^.^^.S/.^-v^^S:-^^^ 




v/onder why children waKe 
so e?.rlyinthe morning" - 




See fage 7 



Every Morning's Comedy ii 

Nelson's shades too. Then it would occur to 
me that the noise might wake the baby, and I 
would begin to creep out of bed on my side, 
just as Nelson bounded out on his. I used to 
envy him his command of language. The 
feminine vocabulary is so limited. 

Well, but the worst of it was that the baby 
woke up at five o'clock just the same, no mat- 
ter how dark the room was. Then Nelson 
said that it was all nonsense, my taking 
charge of the baby at night. What was he 
paying a nurse for, he should like to know, 
if he was to have no rest? He proposed to 
have her earn her wages. In vain I protested 
that she wouldn't stay, and that a good 
nurse was awfully hard to keep under the 
circumstances. We argued on the subject 
until we woke the baby, and then Nelson, 
in his masculine, superior way, rose and 
took him, howling, to Hilda. Hilda was one 
of the best nurses I ever had, but she gave 
notice next day, on the ground that I had told 
her, when she came, that I would take care 
of the baby at night myself. Nelson said that 



12 Every Day Essays 

I made my mistake in telling her that, and so 
I tried letting the next nurse plainly under- 
stand that she should have the entire charge 
of the baby. To my surprise, she did not 
object, and I felt crestfallen, and didn't say 
much about it to my husband. He wasn't so 
magnanimous. He made it the subject of 
conversation whenever we had our intimates 
in for an evening, and I got thoroughly tired 
of Molly's perfections as a nurse. The worst 
was that the baby slept all night without a 
murmur, and until seven in the morning, and 
Nelson and my own father agreed that chil- 
dren nearly always did bettei away from their 
mothers. They petted them too much, father 
said, and the children got exacting. Now, 
a good, common Irish woman was just the 
sort of simple-natured person to suit a child; 
the modern woman was too nervous and com- 
plicated. Anci so on, until I began to feel 
such complicated instincts rising up in me as 
made speech inadequate. Those two men 
can thank the modern training that took me 



E.very Morning's Comedy 13 

out of the room before certain primitive im- 
pulses* entirely mastered me. 

1 went straight up to the nursery where 
Jamie lay asleep, intending to put my head 
on his little arm, and nestle my hot face in 
his delicious little neck, and assure myself 
that he was my own baby and I was his own 
mother, whether I was good for him or not. 
He smells like the daintiest of wild flowers 
when he is asleep, and I can never long 
cherish any ill feelings with my cheek next 
his. I love to let his milky breath blow over 
my face, too. But what was this? He 
smelled of whiskey! I couldn't believe my 
very trustworthy nose. Then I decided that 
it must be on his night-dress; but no, sniff as 
I would, it smelled only nice and flannelly. 
I sniffed and sniffed, and finally brushed my 
nose lightly over his dear little mouth ! 
Irish women, indeed! I admit that their 
methods of securing a good baby at night are 
much too simple for me. 

Nelson bore up bravely under the blow, 
protesting that he did not believe it was any- 



// Every Day Essays 

thing but an occasional occurrence — as if I 
would stand an occasionally drunken baby ! — 
but when he saw how his modest supply of 
whiskey had dwindled during Molly's stay, 
he gave in; and I took my turn telling stories 
to our friends. Nelson said, at last, that if I 
didn't stop, I would give Jamie a reputation 
for fast living before he was out of his cradle, 
and for the dear child's sake I forbore. 

We finally compromised on having the 
nurse come and take the baby in the early 
morning. But she was not nearly so reliable 
in the matter of hours as Jamie was, and now, 
after six years, it has got to be a regular habit 
of mine to rise, take the baby — it's Jack 
now — keep my eyes as nearly shut as pos- 
sible, trying to hold on to the vague dreams 
from which I have just been roused, go into 
the nursery and wake the nurse. The other 
children are always awake, too, and no 
amount of management on my part has yet 
sufficed to make them let me alone. They 
want a kiss ; they want a drink ; they want to 
tell me what they dreamed; they want to 



Every Morning's Comedy 75 

wear their new clothes; they want to have a 
picnic; they want a thousand things; and I 
want to go to bed. I have tried kissing them 
and saying nothing. They immediately want 
to know if I am " mad." I say no, only 
sleepy, and they spring around my neck. 
Sweet nuisances ! It's a pity that I can't just 
stay and be bright and sweet and loving with 
them. I cuddle them a little, and sometimes 
I get into bed with them, and we have a beau- 
tiful time. But, dear me ! How sleepy I am 
before my morning's work is half over ! And 
then the next day they expect the same per- 
formance; and I have made up my mind 
against it, and I have to speak sharply to them 
to make them let me go — and then I 
am so utterly miserable at having spoiled 
the beginning of their bright, beautiful day 
that I go back to bed, and cry, and wake 
Nelson, and he is crosser than he means to 
be, and we have a constrained breakfast. He 
generally brings me home a bunch of 
flowers at night after such a season, and I 



i6 Every Day Essays 

know by that that he has been at least a httle 
miserable all day; and I am glad of it. 

I do seem to have a good deal more to 
think about in the way of child-management 
than many of my neighbors do. Perhaps it 
is because I don't believe in spanking. Nel- 
son says so, at any rate. He holds the 
opinion that a good sound thrashing would 
settle most of my difficulties, and he points 
to the case of our neighbors in triumphant 
illustration. 

" It's nothing for them to bring up chil- 
dren," he explains. " They sew for them, 
and work for them, and feed them, and spank 
them, and that's all there is to it. They don't 
lie awake nights trying to puzzle out the 
exact kind of punishment necessary to fit a 
given offense." 

Even he, however, sees the absurdity of 
spanking children by way of putting them to 
sleep. He has often said that he wanted to, 
as an expression of his own feelings, but 
when I have told him to go ahead, and ex- 



Every Morning's Comedy 17 

press mine too while he was about it, he has 
always found some feeble excuse. 

In the course of five or six years we have 
progressed from rising at five o'clock to rising 
at six, and we feel a bit encouraged. About 
the time we get thoroughly broken in, the 
children will begin to stay asleep until seven, 
I suppose, and memories of my own child- 
hood lead me to suspect that a few years fur- 
ther on we may have trouble in waking them 
at all. In the meantime, I take considerable 
satisfaction out of the reflection that the 
baby of one of my spanking neighbors wakes 
every morning at four. 

Nor is this the whole of the morning prob- 
lem. There is the question of getting 
dressed. Now I happen to be reading a 
society novel in which the heroine, a superbly 
healthy young married woman without any 
children, and apparently living in a world 
in which they are unknown quantities, wakes 
in the morning to find her maid drawing 
aside the curtains of her window and admit- 
ting the late morning sunlight. Then she 



i8 Every Day Essays 

has a cup of fragrant tea and some fruit and 
toast and an egg on a dainty tray, on which 
are laid her letters and a few loose, dewy 
roses. She slips into her porcelain tub next, 
and afterwards dons her exquisite morning 
gown and sits dreaming of the other man 
while her maid brushes her hair. 

This just suits my ideas — all except the 
other man. Nelson has his faults, but, after 
all, I prefer him to any one else I know. 
What I should like would be to repeat that 
programme I have just outlined, and have 
Nelson come in at the right moment and kiss 
my hair and tell me I am the sweetest thing 
on earth. He does sometimes, as it is, but 
it is never in the morning before breakfast. 
We seem to have to do our visiting when the 
children are in bed. I have taken to bathing 
at night, too, and Nelson shaves then. It is 
really a good idea, and reduces some of the 
difficulties of the morning. 

What really happens is something like this : 
I get dressed just as fast as I possibly can, 
and slip on a kimono. It is a blessed gar- 



Every Morning s Comedy ly 

ment, and we owe a real debt to Japan for it. 
My hair goes up in the biggest kind of a 
hurry, and quantities of invisible hair-pins 
take the place of the curling-irons I really 
ought to use. Still, I don't look untidy. I 
have a little respect for Nelson, even before 
breakfast, and I spend a good deal of time 
and some money in getting myself morning 
gowns that are pretty and easily put on. 

The baby, bless him, is not much trouble. 
He has been put into a double gown and a 
nest of pillows and given quantities of toys. 
But Jamie and Helen! They are ready for 
anything except the business of dressing. 
The orders to the nurse are to keep them in 
bed and well covered until she herself is 
dressed, but I have never been able to enforce 
this rule. There was one woman who obeyed 
it, but she never got herself properly attired 
until after ten. I am afraid I don't manage 
to be evenly severe. Helen generally finds it 
imperative upon her to employ this interval 
in play with the baby, and I must say for her 
that she is very considerate of him, keeping 



20 Every Day Essays 

him carefully covered, to the entire ignoring 
of her own cold little toes. She creeps around 
him on the bed to get what he wants, and lies 
with her curly head in his lap, letting him 
pull her hair as if it were as much fun for 
her as for him. At other times she regards 
this favorite occupation of his as an in- 
sult and an injury, but anything seems to be 
preferable to the torture of getting dressed. 

Jamie, meanwhile, has crawled under the 
bedclothes and made a tent of them, and 
turned himself into all manner of animals. 
Then he proposes to have an earthquake, and 
the wildly agitated bedclothes presently strew 
the floor. 

There is scarcely a morning that some- 
thing like this doesn't happen. It seems an 
awful pity that the cheerful waking should 
so soon be merged in sorrow and rebellion 
and disorder. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't 
our state of civilization that is to blame. 
If these youngsters of ours are really the 
little savages, the Vandals and Visigoths the 
psychologists tell us they are, doesn't it stand 



Every Mornings Comedy 21 

to reason that they would rebel at being so 
early bound with the shackles of civilization? 

While I am puzzling myself fruitlessly 
over these speculations, Jamie has wriggled 
and twisted into his clothes, ducked his head 
under my arm when I attempted to wash his 
face, informed me of the presence of sore 
places on each of his fingers and across all of 
his knuckles, objected valiantly to having his 
hair parted in the middle — the only way that 
is becoming to him — insisted upon wearing 
his old sweater instead of his new blouse, and 
been finally hustled down to breakfast. 
Against all orders, Katie, losing patience 
with Helen's dreamy pretence of dressing her- 
self, has taken her bodily into her lap and 
dressed her as if she were a baby. Absorbed 
in my tussle with Jamie, I pretend not to 
notice, for Nelson will be down by this time, 
walking restlessly through the hall while he 
waits for breakfast. How Helen is ever go- 
ing to learn to dress herself is more than I 
know. 

Nelson and I are trying hard to be good- 



22 Every Day Essays 

natured when we finally sit down to break- 
fast, and the result is rather grim. He knows 
that if he speaks his mind now on the import- 
ance of teaching children to dress themselves 
and inculcating habits of punctuality, he 
will be sorry for it later. I mentally plead 
my own defense as I pour the coffee, and 
coax the children to drink their milk. They 
talk away like two magpies. Jamie particu- 
larly is never so communicative, never so 
thirsty for information, as during this early 
meal. 

" Say, mamma," he begins, " can't I have 
a football? I'm getting to be an awful big 
boy now, and Jenkins Talbot, down in the 
next block, has got a beauty. You lace it up 
like a shoe and blow it up with a pipe stem. 
And, papa, will you let me take your old pipe 
to break the stem off? I'll tell you what, 
save me all your old pipes. That will teach 
you to be e — quo — nomical. Mamma, be 
sure to write an excuse for me at school, and 
don't you tell the teacher I had a stomach- 
ache from eating too much candy. I want to 





ainty and ivGsh for the moment 
m her second clean dre^^ 



Slc page 



Every Mornings Comedy 2j 

have her respect me. And I didn't eat any 
more than Helen, anyway, and she didn't 
have a stomachache. I don't think God's 
very fair, myself. And, say, do you know 
what she ate last night? " 

Then his father and I enter the fray. The 
father speaks his mind strongly on the sub- 
ject of little boys teasing httle girls, while I 
wipe Helen's eyes and feed her oatmeal, all 
the time wondering what on earth she has 
been eating this time, and whether it was 
really bad for her. Helen has a finicky appe- 
tite, and likes all the things she ought not to 
like, and dislikes all manner of health-food 
as thoroughly as does her father; so I am 
presently playing games with her oatmeal to 
induce her to swallow it. A little birdie, 
loudly peeping, flys home to his nest in her 
mouth with the first spoonful, and a barking 
dog follows after with the second. Her 
dreamy eyes look off into the distance as I 
talk, and she is quite unconscious of what she 
is swallowing. A straw is necessary to in- 
duce her to drink her milk, and as soon as I 



2^ Every Day Essays 

take my eyes off her, to look at my own rapid- 
ly cooling breakfast, she uses it to blow milk 
bubbles, and shouts with delight over them 
in a way that attracts the attention of baby 
Jack, and sets him reaching for her glass. 
Over it goes, and the milk drenches the table- 
cloth and her little fresh dress. Nelson 
rises abruptly, and says he must hurry to the 
office; and I choke down my cold coffee, 
and wonder why breakfast Is never what it 
ought to be. 

In spite of the early rising, It Is now dan- 
gerously near school-time. Jamie's cap and 
gloves are nowhere to be found, and as he 
struggles into his reefer, which sticks in a 
most remarkable manner, he remembers that 
he got the lining badly torn in a fight yester- 
day. I have to go up stairs, therefore, and 
get out his best reefer, and put it on him 
with many misgivings. He kisses me hastily 
and savagely, and when I hold him back for 
some more satisfactory apology, he tears him- 
self away with a howl to the effect that he 
will be late at school. I stand watching him 



Every Mornings Comedy 23 

down the street, with the tears very near my 
eyes, for I do love him with all my heart, 
and every one of his hasty young words has 
hurt me to the quick. Presently he turns 
around and sees me. He throws a kiss — an- 
other and another — until I throw them back. 
Then his face breaks into sunshine again, he 
hurls himself at the tail-board of a passing 
wagon, and hitches down the street out of 
my sight, his stubby shoes spattering the back 
of his best reefer with mud. 

The kindergarten 'bus arrives for Helen, 
presently, and she kisses me sweetly and 
trips down the steps, dainty and fresh for the 
moment in her second clean dress. How im- 
portant she feels as she swings open the door 
and climbs into the vehicle all by herself! 
She will not let any one help her, and the 
patient driver, tutored now by many months 
of such experiences with children who prize 
every scrap of their new-found Independence, 
sits quietly upon the front seat, waiting for 
her, and even the old horses perceive that, 
there is time to hang their heads. If I could 



26 Every Day lissays 

have taken her dressing this morning as 
comfortably ! 

I go in to the baby, who must have his 
bath and be properly clothed with the 
starched garments of conventionality. Happy 
in his loose flannels, but already getting 
dingy, he is rolling about the nursery floor. 

There Is one thing I have thoroughly mas- 
tered — the art of bathing a little baby. If I 
knew any other thing as well as I know that, 
I might perhaps find many of my problems 
solving themselves. 

T rise to this level of bliss — this conscious- 
ness of agreeable labor skillfully performed — 
only once a day. The baby and I both enjoy 
the morning bath, and nothing would induce 
me to leave to the nurse anything more than 
getting the hot water ready for mc. He is 
undressed in a jiffy, and his little warm 
clothes, still showing the curves of his blessed 
young body, drop into the basket at my side. 
One small sleeve, full of raying wrinkles at 
the elbow, hangs appeallngly over Its edge, 
begging to be caressed, but 1 am too busy 



Every Moniiiii^'s Comedy 2y 

loving the dimpled body in my arms. Talk 
about poet's raptures over kissing a fair 
maiden ! No such kisses can be compared, 
for sheer delight, with kissing a little warm 
healthy baby. I put him up around my neck, 
and bury my face in sweetest flesh, all made 
of milk; and he crows and gurgles and 
clutches my hair until T pull his hands away 
and kiss the pink palms of them, and the soles 
of his darling feet. It is such fun to feel the 
tiny toes trying to clutch my face as if they 
were fingers! Mindful that one must not 
press such joys too far lest they turn to woes, 
1 presently dab one little foot in the bath, then 
the other, and when he is eager for more, 
gently lower him into the water. I never put 
him in suddenly, or without fair warning of 
what he is to expect. His mind is in the 
water before he is. 

Just lately he has learned ♦:o splash, and 
his little legs and arms churn the water into 
a splendid froth. His delicious mother-of- 
pearl skin, pink amid the white suds, out- 



28 Every Day Essays 

rivals that of any Venus shining through the 
foam of the sea. 

But now comes the crucial moment: he is 
to be lifted from that basin of delights! 

How lovely he is, as he lies there in my 
arms, the white lids slowly drifting down 
over his blissful blue eyes ! One little hand 
grasps my finger and thrills me like the touch 
of a lover. His feet gently push against me, 
his soft body lies curled in utter peace and 
contentment. I sing, as I rock, and as I 
sing I think of the thousands of other 
mothers who have rocked and sung as I am 
doing. All down the ages this joy has passed 
from generation to generation, holy and un- 
selfish and pure. Surely the world is better 
because of it ! The Egyptian women sang 
under the shadow of the pyramids — low, 
monotonous chants, perhaps, like the monot- 
onous stretch of the desert, but swelling with 
love, as even the barren desert swells toward 
the bending sky. And they felt as I feel, sit- 
ting here crooning to my baby. The Greek 
wontem — deep-bosomed, strong, and serene — 



Every Morning's Comedy 29 

dreamed the dreams of their own un- 
awakened natures for their boy babies, as they 
sang, and passed on to their girl babies their 
own patience. The Roman women dedi- 
cated their sleeping children to the gods of 
war and of justice, but they loved as I love, 
and they knew, as I know, that no dream and 
no dedication could be high enough for the 
precious little being sheltered in their arms. 
The early Christian women learned to love 
the Christ-Child the better because they knew 
how it was with His mother; and over the 
very God of the universe they felt something 
of a mother's tenderness and longing. Oh, 
my sisters, far and near, I know your inmost 
heart of hearts as I sit here, rocking my baby ! 



Mother and Child, 



In profound peace the mother lies with the 
new baby on her arm. Her consciousness in 
the quiet, darkened room is focussed on one 
spot — her forefinger, rough with many fine 
needle-pricks, and held fast in the baby's 
warm clutch. Tiny thrills of life-giving love 
run through her, as if that little hand were 
a battery generating some fluid more potent 
than electricity. Later, when the baby has 
been lifted away from her, she still feels that 
wonderful touch, and lies with shut eyes, try- 
ing to tell herself what it is like. She has 
heard of a rose-leaf skin — but the worn 
phrase is, after all, too coarse. She has read 
of hands cased in finest silk — but no silk 
could compare with that velvety texture, so 
exquisite, yet so full of life — of something 
finer than life. She tries to imagine, as the 
impression fades, what that is, compared with 
30 




SW fas-e jt 



Mother and Child jr 

which rose leaves are harsh, and when the 
baby Is brought to her again, and seizes her 
finger In his insistent grasp — the grasp of 
mastery — she perceives that her Imagination 
has fallen short of the truth. 

It Is well that the long days, over-fraught 
with the future, are broken by the many rou- 
tine duties of the sick-room. It is well that 
pain comes to break this ethereal bliss — this 
sense of being chosen as one of the creative 
powers of the universe. The baby's crying 
saves her from too great awe of him. And 
as, after a time, she washes and dresses him, 
coaxing him into an unwilling acquiescence 
with civilization, she finds herself able to for- 
get, somewhat, the marvel of him, and to 
accept him among the daily things. 

And when, at last, the nurse goes — that 
white-capped angel and tyrant in one, before 
whom she has been ashamed to reveal her full 
sense of the overwhelming miracle that has 
been wrought — she tries to show her husband 
a little of that which Is bursting her bosom. 
He is young and strong, with a man's pride 



32 Every Day Essays 

suddenly set upon his boyishness, and his arm 
supports her as they walk to the cradle where 
the baby lies asleep. They are alone together 
with this little being who belongs to them 
even more than they belong to themselves. 
She tries to speak, but cannot; the message 
is too great. They look down at the baby in 
a tender silence. Does her husband really 
know, she wonders, does he know as she 
knows? She looks up at him, and the new 
motherhood in her becomes aware of the 
babyhood in him — of the undeveloped pos- 
sibilities of his manhood. She leans her head 
against his shoulder that he may have the 
pleasure of caring for her. She knows a 
secret that little by little, in spite of oblivions 
and masculine rebellions, she will impart to 
him — a secret which shall make him grow 
Into such nobleness as her maiden dreams 
guessed at. 

He holds her quietly — this weak creature 
who has done so much, suffered so much, 
bravely shouldered such a great responsibil- 
ity — this woman, who used, such a little while 



Mother and Child 33 

ago, to be a gay girl, but is now sweetened 
and chastened, the mother of his child. He 
will shelter and protect her, sustain her as 
never before. In his heart, inarticulately, he 
takes the vows of fatherhood. 

He leads her back to the sofa. In the fire- 
lit room they sit hand in hand, listening to the 
baby's fluttering breath. " See," she whis- 
pers, " he doesn't even know how to breathe 
yet, the young, young thing ! How he loses 
his breath and catches it again. Doesn't the 
little break in it hurt your heart, as you 
listen?" 

As this first rapture fades, there come other 
joys, as if to whip her bounding love to an 
ever swifter pace. The baby smiles! It is 
like the birth of a fair soul in a fair body; 
and she appeals to all her world to see this 
great thing. It makes for balance when she 
is tenderly laughed at, but she is not abashed 
by the jokes about colic and meaningless con- 
tractions of the muscles of the face. She 
knows what she knows, and the baby and she 
have a friendly understanding about it, a 



S4- Ez'ery Day Essays 

friendliness which the baby presently ex- 
presses in unmistakable gurgles and crows. 

Now is the beginning of true companion- 
ship, as mother and child play together. A 
naked soul looks forth at her from these 
crystal-clear eyes, unashamed and most beau- 
tiful. Only because her eyes are washed in 
love can the mother herself endure to see it. 

This embodied energy overflows, by-and- 
by, spreading like a transforming atmosphere 
over the face of the world of things. Every- 
thing becomes a plaything — the world itself 
one great plaything. Everything is endowed 
with life from the fullness of the life that be- 
holds it. Common household utensils are 
changed in the twinkling of an eye at the bid- 
ding of his majesty the Player. Clothes-pins 
are these? Never! They are birds, sheep, 
soldiers, what he wills. A Caesar such as 
Caesar never was, he flies the confines of time 
and space, and soars amid the eternities — a 
creator peopling his forming world with crea- 
tures flexible to his bidding. 

Later he finds limits to his power, and 



Mother and Child js 

with them new dehghts. Here are other 
young monarchs whose wills now clash with 
his own, now reinforce it. He measures his 
strength with these other children; is de- 
feated; rises again. There is a new zest to 
life; here are new fields to conquer — stub- 
born, resistant fields that tax all his strength. 
The children, together, conquer nature now 
with their hands and bodies, as well as with 
their imaginations. Balls fly through the air. 
Kites tug like live things high in the clouds 
and almost pull a giant boy, mighty as Thor, 
from his firmly-planted feet. The mother, 
looking on, knows a new and nobler pride. 
These, her playing children, teach her deep 
lessons as she watches and dreams. The 
vague thoughts and profound emotions of her 
own childhood come to clearer consciousness, 
and help her to catch the rhythm of the 
world-forces at play. 

Her husband comes home from work In 
the cool of the evening and pauses beside 
her to watch the frolicking children. With 
a shout they fall upon him, and drag him, 



j<5 Every Day Essays 

only half protesting, into the game. Tired 
as he is, he tosses hat and coat aside, and 
romps with them. His wife sees the boyhood 
she never knew, and arrives at an understand- 
ing wifehood. So he, too, was a boy like 
these? Yes; and he is one even to-day; yet 
how faithfully he labors at hard tasks! He 
tires soon, and throws himself, breathless, at 
her feet. She slips her hand into his, stoop- 
ing to do it, and they look into each other's 
eyes with a smile. 

The long bright day of childhood draws 
to a rebelHous close. Sleep, the conqueror, 
comes to take possession of a recalcitrant 
foe. It is hard to drop the riotous joys, to 
still the tingling nerves, to relax the tense 
muscles. The children must stop playing it 
seems; they must speak to God a little; they 
must resign their sovereign wills. With what 
jaunty irrelevance it is done ! Was there ever 
a more spirited surrender? They swagger 
in the very face of Divinity and speak their 
prayers with lips full of undaunted curves. 
The solemn words of the set supplications 



Mother and Child 37 

are broken with irrepressible giggles. Yet 
there is a reverence in the very midst of this 
seeming irreverence. There Is a touching cer- 
tainty that the Heavenly Father will not be 
offended — that He will hear and understand. 
The mother smiles to herself, and feels for a 
moment as if she had looked into God's eyes, 
as she did into her husband's, and shared 
an intimate tenderness with Him. 

At last, asleep! The tossing limbs have 
suddenly stilled at some unheard word of 
command. A stray curl still waves upon the 
pillow. 

Silence steals into the room — silence, and 
the reach of the great star-filled spaces. The 
hush is full of potencies, friendly, close, in- 
expressibly tender and delicate — potencies 
which order the cobweb threads of life and 
weave therefrom the substance of the uni- 
verse. The mother's heart, thrilling as 
Mary's thrilled, lifts itself in a wordless 
prayer, too deep for any utterance but the 
long service of the years to come. 



An Irresponsible Ramble* 



This morning I set forth, with note-book 
under arm, resolved to do some thinking in 
the open air. But man proposes and — a red 
bird flew across my path and took my 
startled eyes after him down the garlanded 
aisles of the wood. He made a brilliant mark 
for an enemy, as he flashed crimson through 
the green gloom. Once upon a time didn't I 
hear something about protective coloring for 
birds? Here is a swashbuckling gallant, 
dressing as he pleases with a braggart dis- 
regard of prudence. 

I know nothing about these wild-wood 
neighbors of mine. Not a single corner of 
my brain is devoted to cubby-holes in which 
to file away facts concerning them. I have 
no notion what name this red bird bears, nor 
whether his are the full-throated notes I hear 
presently from the deeper shadows. I should 
38 



An Irresponsible Ramble jg 

prefer him to be a Kentucky Cardinal, be- 
cause of Mr. Allen's lovely book, but for no 
other reason. He may fly away Into the 
woods and back to his family duties unpur- 
sued by any curiosity of mine. He is sufli- 
cient just I know him — a rosy surprise. 

Isn't there something to be said, after all, 
for the dreamer who goes unseeing about 
the world? Wild creatures take into their 
confidence those who sit down in their chosen 
haunts and are still: mental stillness and 
passivity may have a similar power of attrac- 
tion for the gentler potencies; and activity 
of the mind, a positive aggressive attitude 
toward the world, may render us unfriends 
with some of the fairest truths and sweetest 
affections in it. 

Here's a pool — not a real one, just a hap- 
pen-so pool. We have had heavy rains late- 
ly, and this lies In a basin between hills gentle 
as maidenly bosoms. It Is a shallow, lonely 
little thing about five Inches deep, but you 
should see the sky In it, all tangled up In wet 
grass and dead leaves. The trees lean state- 



4.0 Every Day Essays 

ly and tolerant above it, content to drink 
from its modest cup. There are those who 
think depth is a necessity for full reflection, 
but here is proof that the deepest images 
may linger in a sweet little place that is still 
and friendly. 

That frog certainly has bronchitis, with a 
bad touch of asthma. Perhaps he finds the 
pool a trifle damp? At any rate he has his 
hoarse little barkings to himself. He disturbs 
nobody and nobody disturbs him. There I 
He is playing with his hoarseness like a 
croupy child left alone. " Tchutt, tchutt! 
Tchutt, tchutt! Tdi-tch-tch-toh-tchutt! '' A 
httle bird twitters back to him. I know she's 
on her nest, and feeling motherly. 

The cunningest little liveling skitters across 
the pool. No doubt he thinks it the ocean 
and himself a focus of tremendous energy. 
The splintered water shines behind his zig- 
zags as he darts about, with wings of light 
trailing after him. He covers the happen-so 
pool with happen-so arabesques, the dearest, 
most useless things, made of light and water. 



An Irresponsible Ramble 4.1 

I am going to sit here a minute with my 
back to this felled tree-trunk, and my eyes 
closed. At once I am living in a world of 
sounds and scents. The green leaves whisper 
above, and the dry leaves chatter below, as 
they dance over the ground, visiting and gos- 
siping. All sorts of bird-notes play over the 
universal rustling, like variations on a quiet 
melody. First there comes a single whistle, 
then an inquiring, gentle Hit, from low note 
to higher; next a long trill with a quavering 
fall at the end — and always that pervasive 
rustle, soft, uninsistent, made up of innumer- 
able small movements, yet with an elemental 
vastness, like the murmur of the seas. 

Insects whizz and whirl and buzz through 
it all; like broken wires in a piano, marring 
the harmony. They touch me with their feet 
and wings. Brr ! Away with you ! I like 
not such busy, bustling, trifling mites, indis- 
criminately poking into everything, especially 
into me. Isn't it too bad that the persons 
we really care to know — the birds and squir- 
rels and wildling animals — keep their dis- 



4-2 Every Day Essays 

tance In tree-top and hiding-places, while 
those we love not — the insect things — insist 
upon our intimacy? They are the living 
images of worries, these pests, shrill, articu- 
late, circling. You can drive them away for 
a second or two, but they come back. 

England, they say, knows not these insect 
hosts of ours. There people can drink tea on 
the lawn with comfort, even in mid-summer. 
Why is it — I ask in a whisper, for it is too 
fanciful to be asked out loud — why Is It that 
we in America hurry and worry so, and that, 
at the same time, our air is full of hurrying, 
worrying flies and mosqultos? There may be 
no relation of cause and effect. We might all 
take to loafing and inviting our souls, and 
yet the spider and the fly-paper might con- 
tinue plentifully busy; but sure I am of one 
thing — the corruscations of the tree-trunks, 
the cracks of our home wood-work, the 
mosses, and grasses, the water, the very air 
we breathe, are all full of the most disgusting 
and convincing little pictures of our Inward 
condition. Talk of the whip of our skies — 



An Irresponsible Ramble 4.3 

it is the sting of our insects that drives us to 
nervous prostration, and to spiritual failure 
under the guise of financial success. Since we 
can't kill off at once all the seventeen-year 
locusts, and grasshoppers, and ants, and 
mosca vomitoria (this is one scientific name I 
have found thoroughly satisfactory), and all 
the rest of those insane, sibilant shreds of ex- 
istence, let us at least put up screens before 
our mental windows and get a space of empty 
air to rest in when we are at home with our- 
selves. 

The Garden of Eden Is guarded from us, 
I almost believe, not only by an angel with a 
flaming sword that turns every way, but by 
a thick zone of such buzzing insects as these 
that mar the peace of our woods — or are they 
merely the flashes from the angel's sword, be- 
wildering and confusing us, and filling our 
brains with a humming we think comes from 
without? In that Garden man walked, naked 
and unashamed, in the cool of the evening 
with God. Probably he did not speak, but 
he knew what the trees meant, and the birds, 



4-4' Every Day Essays 

the wild creatures, and the little flowers under- 
foot. God, and man, and the world spoke 
the same language. For see how well Eve 
understood the serpent, and guessed, trem- 
bling, the transcendent nature of the fruit he 
tempted her to eat ! Oh, it may be that our 
most dearly bought knowledge has driven us 
forth from this delectable place; but we can 
at least catch glimpses, through the blinding 
flashes, of the green peace and innocence we 
may not possess. We can be true to our her- 
itage and love it, though it be riven from us. 

It is time for me to open my eyes and move 
on. The air here really is a bit damp. The 
trees shade me too much. Longings creep 
out of the hot moist earth, and touch me 
slimily. 

The trees step aside as I advance. They 
grow taller toward the sun. Their branches 
reach out In freedom and grow In grace and 
strength. The increasing light shines through 
their leaves till they hang Hke faintly-lighted 
green lanterns. Grass-blades shoot thicker 
and thicker through the dead leaves, the earth 



An Irresponsible Ramble 45 

shows sandy here and there — ah, we are near- 
Ing the river! I had forgot that It ran 
through these woods, the dear, twisting river 
I know and love. 

Now we have the sky, a breath of cooler 
air, and more space. Suddenly there Is also 
more life. The woods were nowhere still 
and empty; but here their teeming rustle, 
and flicker, and call Is but the suitable ac- 
companiment for a mightier life. 

I never get over wondering why the river 
seems so alive, so instantly the very soul of 
any scene of which It Is a part. This Is so 
much so that I cannot wander long in the 
loveliest place without looking for some 
stretch of water. Until I find it I am not con- 
tent, nor am I then content. It is like the 
hovering hope of the key-note in music. You 
must have it, or know no rest; but once hav- 
ing It, even though the music stops, your 
mind goes on, over and over the lovely phras- 
ing that soars above and drops below the 
tonic chord, only to return to it, inevitably, 
and fill it fuller of meaning. 



46 Every Day Essays 

Once I stood on a mountain top, high in 
the stainless air, and looked forth upon un- 
reckoned miles of massed mountains. A 
majesty almost beyond endurance loomed up- 
on me from the mighty dome of the sky and 
my heart swelled with the heave of the hills; 
yet my questioning mind sought, dissatisfied, 
for the expanse of blue water that ought, 
somewhere, to have made a beginning and an 
end. 

But why? What is there In this vast ag- 
glomeration of atoms of HoO that so moves 
the soul of man? One drop of water has 
no such power — nor a hundred, nor a mil- 
lion — why, then, trillions? Is It merely a 
matter of multiplication ? Truly there 
dwells in us all a love of wrestling with the 
Immensities, of counting the sons, and 
reckoning the Infinities. In an effort to grasp 
what may not be grasped we try to exalt 
matter into spirit merely by getting more of 
it, thus building another Tower of Babel in 
the effort to scale the skies. The real process, 
I think, is much simpler: we see angels as- 



An Irresponsible Ramble // 

cending and descending Jacob's ladder In our 
dreams. 

I am going to lie along this tree-trunk bent 
out over the river. My fingers drop into the 
cool water that slides between them quiver- 
ingly. If I keep very still and touch the rush- 
ing power delicately perhaps I shall guess 
its meaning. This is what all peoples have 
done and still do in their infancy — touch na- 
ture with themselves in the effort to under- 
stand her. Beautiful guesses some of them 
have made, and where beauty is one is in- 
clined to suspect some truth. Thus the 
Greeks filled the waters full of lovely lives, 
seeing naiads in the woodland fountains, 
nymphs In the rivers, and Tritons and Sirens 
in the mighty ocean. Venus, the desire of 
mankind, rose from the sea — of course she 
did. One perceives Immediately that this 
was no fancy, but a necessity. And the wilder 
creatures of Norse mythology — the Rhine 
maidens, the god who drank the ocean at a 
draught — these, too, are true. They strike 
the note of power which lurks beneath the 



^8 Every Day Essays 

peacefulest song of the waters. All peoples 
perceive themselves reflected in the waters of 
the world, and perceive something of the 
waters in themselves. This the Indians knew 
and explained in their Story of Hawt, the 
Spirit of the Waters, who played upon the 
flute of his own body the song of all the 
world, and finally his own song, which no one 
else knew. 

The meaning of the world is what we all 
seek to know — bright Greek, strong Norse- 
man, simple children of Nature, alert Amer- 
icans, all — and it is this we never find. Still 
the fairy promises us the gift of understand- 
ing the speech of animals and of growing 
things; but as sure as we hold the gift we 
lose it. This river is telling me things 
through my finger-tips — things my mind is 
too young to understand, and will be too 
young, though I should live a thousand years. 
The trees, the birds, and all the out-of-door 
things have been talking to my soul. I catch 
a syllable now and then, and I know the love 
in the changing face bent above my infancy. 



An Irresponsible Ramble 4.9 

If I am patient, and wait, hearing the same 
words over and over again, perhaps some day 
a whole sentence, full of love and truth, may 
wake me to answering speech. 

I remember that long ago there played up- 
on the hills of Galilee a little boy whose soul 
thus Hstened and who found the answer. He 
knew the secret of the stormy waves and the 
ways of the fishes within them. The winds 
and the wilderness he knew, and when, a 
wearied man, he fled from the importunate 
multitude at night, the mountain solitudes re- 
ceived him like a mother. When he spoke, 
his speech was full of the living world, and 
therefore of eternal verity. Oh, beautiful 
river, bending trees, singing birds, and 
caressing winds, let me lose my inadequacies 
in the wonder of you and be lifted, for a lit- 
tle, to my rightful place in the order of the 
universe. Thence, it may be, I shall be 
enabled to look this Man clearly in the face 
and do reverence to the secret which made 
him your master and interpreter. 

I cannot tell the rest. Out of a deep peace, 



^o Every Day Essays 

below and above thought, the wind arises 
presently and buffets me hito my every day 
consciousness. I discover that I am cramped 
on my tree-trunk and very hungry, also that 
the sun Is straight above the center of the 
river, throwing dazzling reflections Into my 
eyes. As I go home along the dusty road — 
for the way Is shorter and dinner beckons Im- 
peratively — my feet carry me sprlnglly under 
the hot noon sky, my lungs drink deep of the 
sweet air, rich with Nature's cookery, my 
heart beats free, my stomach Is unashamed 
of Its honest need, and I am glad to be alive. 
I am glad there Is food and after it work — 
lots of work for the piled-up energy within 
me. There Is not a single line of writing In 
my note-book, but I have made a discovery 
for all that : I have discovered that there are 
more ways for Nature to help us than by 
tickling the tops of our brains. 



Home* 

The American is much giv^en to roaming 
about loose in his large country like a restless 
child in an unfamiliar room. Here and 
there a quiet corner shows that he is taking 
possession; but for the most part there are 
too many places that invite him for him to 
remain long in any one of them. He is, 
nevertheless, a home-loving body. He may 
manage to contrive for years in a dug-out, a 
log cabin, or a fashionable hotel; but he 
prefers to have some one belonging to him 
stay at home somewhere and keep a place 
for him. 

In her younger years the American woman 
is not at all the sort of person likely to oblige 
him in this particular. She does not seem 
to hav^e the instinct for home in the same 
degree as her forebears, but has, instead, an 
instinct for freedom and independence, 
51 



52 Every Day Essays 

sharpened by long repression. Home, if it 
deprive her of these things, is no place of 
deh'ght to her, but a place of restraint. She 
tears herself free from it and hies her forth 
to boarding-house and lunch-club, taking up 
her abode with a fair degree of contentment 
in a little dark room devoid of all prettiness. 
Indeed, the room in which the business girl 
spends her few hours of rest and adornment 
is likely to be much less attractive than her 
personal appearance would lead one to ex- 
pect. It is a sleeping-place, merely, cared for 
as little as a man's room. 

The instinct may be crowded out, but it is 
still present, and asserts itself in various ways 
— most noticeably at her office. Here she 
keeps a slender vase, filled with flowers 
bought with her hard-earned dimes and quar- 
ters from the stand on the street-corner. 
Here, too, is a drawer, lined with clean white 
paper and filled with little boxes of pins, 
needles and thread, scented soap, and a pow- 
der-puff — the hidden modern prototype of 
the muslin-draped toilet-table dear to her 



Home S3 



mother's girlhood. No one could mistake 
her desk for a man's except on the most cur- 
sory survey of it. If her china-closet is re- 
duced to an ice-water glass, see how bright she 
keeps It and how jealously she guards It from 
the sacrilegious fingers of the office-boy! 

This other girl, too, who has flown far 
afield in the pursuit of knowledge, does what 
she can to make her college room homelike. 
Just why the poster should have achieved so 
honorable a reputation as a means to this end 
may be a matter of wonder to the next gen- 
eration, but this one has set its seal upon It 
as well as upon window-seats and sofa-pillows 
as the certain symbols of home. The college 
girl has them all, as well as a chafing-dish 
and tea-kettle, and in disposing of them in the 
tiny space that is hers is comforted of her 
homesickness. She sends her mother long 
descriptions of her surroundings, accom- 
panied by little amateur blue-prints, as a sort 
of link between this temporary abiding-place 
and the home she never appreciated till she 
left it. On Thanksgiving day, when the big 



54- Every Day Essays 

box comes, filled with cookies and preserves, 
her heart overflows and she shares all she has, 
and In return gets little dishes of dainties 
from other girls and with them vicarious 
glimpses Into other homes. The girls trip 
from room to room, laden with gifts and 
vocal with chatter about their goodies and the 
dear people who sent them. They describe 
minutely to one another the familiar Idiosyn- 
crasies of their uncles and aunts, and discover, 
as they hold forth to sympathetic listeners, an 
Interest In peculiarities which heretofore have 
been merely maddening. In the retrospect, 
short as It Is, these things are softened and 
seen In a truer perspective. The talk grows 
wistful and tender as the day deepens, and 
over these hives full of working bees falls, 
with the Thanksgiving twilight, the blessed 
shadow of home. 

Some such appreciation of the home that 
Is really at the heart of every American may 
be detected In other unlikely places — even In 
the Pullman dining-car. Its bill of fare Is an 
elaboration, at this season, of the turkey 




See page 33 



Home SS 

dinner being eaten by family parties over the 
whole length and breadth of the land. The 
traveler, eating while he is hurled through 
space at the rate of a mile a minute, is shy of 
watching other persons or of being watched. 
He jokes jovially with the admiring waiter, 
and fees liberally. The big negro waiter 
understands, and his alert " Yes, sah! " his 
deft withdrawing of the chair at the right 
moment, are full of sympathy too genuine 
and fine to express itself more openly. He is 
a man and a brother, though dusky, and were 
his Thanksgiving tips ever so high, he would 
willingly forego them if he could only sit 
down to his own table. 

Here and there the ideal, struggling for ex- 
pression in all these inadequate forms, finds 
complete expression. The trains are full of 
happy people whose laps are heaped with bun- 
dles and babies, and who show a holiday will- 
ingness to crowd up and make room for the 
new-comer. They are traveling for a fare 
and a third to the family reunion, and are 
taking with them their contributions to the 



5^ Every Day Essays 

feast. Those who live in the country flock to 
the city, and those who Hve in the city flock 
to the country. The little old farm-house by 
the road-side, just barely maintaining its own 
in a decent unobtrusiveness against the tide 
of modern progress, gets out its store of patch- 
work quilts, throws off its shyness, and wel- 
comes a round dozen of guests from the city. 
The city house remembers the simple ways of 
its country predecessor, and opens wide its 
doors to more guests than it can accommodate 
with the degree of style upon which it prides 
itself. This dignified man of the world is 
a farmer's boy again, jovial, warm-hearted, 
and free. His quiet wife remembers the days 
of her happier youth with patient pride. She 
has seen her children leav^e the home-nest one 
by one; she has left it herself, and may never 
see it again. This house that she keeps so 
beautifully will never seem quite like the old 
homestead; yet now that it teems with her 
children and grandchildren, disorderly and 
noisy as home used to be, something sad with- 
in her takes comfort. Surely, she thinks as 



Home 57 

she looks around, there is much to be thank- 
ful for, yet. Were there ever finer children? 
What a wonderful variety of things they do 
— how rich and full their lives are! The 
house seems to pulse and throb with vitality, 
now they are here. What if she does not 
quite understand them all — if they seem to 
have outgrown her love and care? To-day, 
at least, they are hers, dependent upon her 
house for shelter and upon her bounty for 
food. 

As her heart aches with the desire to give 
shelter — to be necessary again to some one's 
happiness and welfare — so other hearts ache 
with the desire to be sheltered and cared for. 
There are those who lov-e home only in this 
passive voice, and do not know it in its ten- 
derer, truer aspect. To the lonely man or 
woman out in the world, struggling against 
misfortune, looked down upon and baffled, 
home is no especial place, but any place where 
he or she can hope to be loved and believed in. 
Who can bear to hear even a hand-organ 
down the street play " Home, Sweet Home," 



$8 Every Day Essays 

in such hours of discouragement? Yet per- 
haps there is no picture of a lowly thatched' 
cottage called to mind by the song — in all 
likelihood we whom the song fills with long- 
ing could not endure life in a thatched cottage 
for a month — yet somewhere in the proces- 
sion of flats, rented rooms, and blocked or 
detached city houses which memory reviews 
there is something that speaks peace, and for 
this we yearn. 

To young men and women, starting a new 
home of their own, it seems unlikely that any 
such passion of longing for old friends and 
places can ever come over them. At first, the 
new little house is so complete, so gay with 
wedding-presents, and so full of all sorts of 
little notions of style and finish, that the old 
home looks shabby and out-of-date; but pres- 
ently the joy of newness wears off, and the 
fact that, after all, they are not so intimately 
acquainted with this place and these things 
as they had supposed — that, somehow, certain 
dear associations are wanting — begins to be 
borne in upon a sore consciousness. It is 



Home 5P 

hard to realize, in the midst of this flat dis- 
satisfaction, that they themselves (who, now 
that they have entered upon the estate of 
matrimony, and are reckoned full-fledged men 
and women, feel, in their secret souls, more 
like children than ever before in their lives) 
are becoming the center for a genuine home, 
and that to them children will look for all 
that tender sympathy, that sense of utter 
safety, which they yet shiver for. x'\s the 
years roll by, mellowing both surroundings 
and judgment, the old home grows steadily 
dearer, and its value is more appreciated. 

Perhaps, as they arrive at this appreciation, 
the old home itself fades from earth, with 
the beloved old people who made it; and it 
may be because of the unsatisfied yearning 
that must remain, that on Thanksgiving day 
most persons feel a sudden welling up of sym- 
pathy for their more bitterly homeless breth- 
ren. They see to it that oyster soup, roast 
turkey, cranberry sauce, and mince and 
pumpkin pies grace every table In hospital or 
prison, In reminder of the home feast for 



6o Every Day Essays 

which all these possibly depraved, but certain- 
ly deprived, fellow-beings are longing. Be- 
yond these things they feel that they must do 
more. They are not content to subscribe to 
the waif's dinner, or to drop a quarter into 
the box of the member of the Salvation 
Army who stands in the highways collecting 
such crumbs of beneficence. When they find 
out some one who needs and will accept a 
good dinner, how lavishly they go about it ! 
They take pleasure in sending a turkey, or 
at least a good fat chicken, as well as the 
necessary flour and potatoes. They even tuck 
into the box a little candy and some nuts, 
glad to think that these are quite superfluous 
and foolish, but that they will give a great 
deal of unregulated pleasure. Their brim- 
ming hearts help them to regard their poorer 
brother as a member of the larger family 
which not every one grows up to appreciate. 
They grant that he has his little follies, like 
the rest, and do not expect him to be alto- 
gether reasonable and economical. They take 



Home 6i 

a loving delight, for this one meal-time, in 
making him happy on his own terms. 

All this home sentiment, as we have seen, 
is, with the American, almost independent of 
any stability of place. His home is peripa- 
tetic. He has little of the feeling of the horse 
who awakes Into life the moment his nose is 
pointed homeward, no matter how poor and 
insufficient may be stall and fodder. He 
hears but faintly the call inviting the cattle 
to leave their juicy fields and wend their way 
through country lanes to the accustomed place 
of shelter. The homing-pigeons that fly, for 
wear)^ day upon weary day, across great 
stretches of country, past innumerable in- 
viting pigeon-houses, to reach the one fa- 
miliar opening in the wall of one familiar 
barn, are led by some feeling which, in that 
form, at any rate, is not in him. The squeal- 
ing piglets that, carried in a closed sack from 
one barn-yard to another, and fed as well in 
the new place as in the old, burrow beneath 
fences with their unringed noses and, scent- 
ing the old pig-sty across miles of pure pas- 



62 Every Day Essays 

ture, make unerringly for it, possess an in- 
stinct which has become, in him, either over- 
laid or transformed. His homing thoughts 
turn scarcely more to one section of this coun- 
try than another — perhaps not to his country 
at all. If In any one place on the round old 
globe there are more persons who love him 
and whom he loves, than in another, then to 
that place his heart seeks most often — that 
place is home. 

The ease with which he settles himself In 
a new environment, the ready friendliness 
with which he cultivates new acquaintances, 
the speed with which he becomes known by 
his Christian name or by some abbreviated, 
half-slangy title, prove that he carries with 
him the hidden materials for home-building. 
He carries his home in his heart, in his sense 
of friendliness with every face of nature and 
with the whole human race. He has made 
the discovery that where peace and love are 
there Is home. 

This discovery has set him free. On what- 
ever rock of Isolated circumstances he may 



Home 6j 

happen to stand, surrounded by whatever seas 
of wildly shifting chance, he knows, with 
Monte Cristo, that the world and its best 
riches are his. The winds of destiny that 
blow him about blow also. In a fine cloud 
around him, the seeds of home ; and as he flies 
from place to place he makes the earth beau- 
tiful with sprouting comforts. Is he, in this, 
less than the animal that finds safety safest In 
one spot ? — less than the Chinaman who bears 
all manner of contumely, Incongruously coil- 
ing an Oriental pigtail under an Occidental 
hat for the hope of final burial In the one 
country that, for him, offers an opening to a 
home after death? Is he less than the Eng- 
lishman who, world-rover though he be, al- 
ways returns or struggles to return to the 
home anchorage at the end? Or is he learn- 
ing to love and trust the real home, which is 
independent of time and space, which Is built 
of spiritual substances — that home which, 
abiding in the heavens, may here be only 
fleetingly and more or less imperfectly rep- 
resented ? 



6^ Every Day Essays 

The imperfections here are so obvious that 
In the close perception of them we often lose 
entirely the sense of homelikeness. No place 
Is so foreign to us — so repels our weary souls, 
seeking to be at ease — as home itself at cer- 
tain seasons. These four walls, holding dis- 
cordant elements, echoing fmitless jangles, 
shutting us in to our discomfortable selves, 
are the walls of a prison w^hereln we sit 
lamenting, in the Ignoble uniform of defeat, 
waiting for an unsocial dish of food. And 
now Indeed we know what homesickness Is 
— the Incurable homesickness which attacks 
us only at home. What jaundice is this that 
galls truth into distemper, and turns love 
Itself Into bitterness? Our heavy eyes follow 
the spots on the carpet and miss the pattern. 
Our dulled ears hear only the irritating 
crackle of unwished-for voices, and know not 
what speech they essay. We view the daily 
litter of living with disgust; and, wherever 
we are, wish vainly we were elsewhere. 

What we need for our cure is change of 
scene — perhaps it is some instinct of this sort 



Home 6^ 

that sets us all a-roving — but fortunately the 
railroad is not the only road we can travel. 
Here, shut within our bookcases, are pass- 
ports to a distant and wholesome region. The 
air-ship of imagination waits at our com- 
mand to sail the ocean of the skies. These 
walls cannot imprison our spirits; and they, 
breaking forth, may let in fresh air upon 
these other troubled ones, our house-mates. 
Whatever the confusion and the stifle near at 
hand, we are not held to it. The stars invite 
us, and all the wide world of space and time 
is ours for escape. 

From a distance we look back and see 
where, high on the mountain-side, stands the 
cabin we love. From these colder regions 
how warm is the glow of its windows — how 
dear even the unmended chinks through 
which it shines ! We wonder that we could 
have so lost perspective as to fret at small 
ills in the face of large blessings. From the 
lowly valley we look up and see home exalted, 
with the light of the dying day still lingering 
above it; and in the darkness of our humility 



66 Every Day Essays 

and loneliness a new light rises — not the sun, 
but a humbler luminary, content with quiet 
reflection. When we get home, we promise 
ourselves, we will be truer to it. 

When we get home! It is something to 
hope for — to make resolves for. When we 
get home we shall be all we ought to be, and 
with full hands shall add blessings to that 
much-loved place, contenting ourselves no 
longer with mere receptivity. In the fuss 
and fume of the world, in the insensate jostle 
of it, it is much that we have this to cheer 
us — this faith that sometime and somewhere 
the home we never knew shall open to us 
in response to the persistent knocking of our 
hearts. Every moment we hold this faith 
moves away mountains of obstacles, and 
breaks them into stones for the building of 
the home we pray for. Every impatience 
repressed binds them firmer in position. All 
high hopes may be safely shrined there; all 
noble endeavor bears fruit there. The truest 
friends forgather there, each rich in appre- 
ciation of the other. Work casts off its 



Home 6y 

cindery disguise and shows Itself a blessing 
there; and we, the workers, know the joy of 
adequacy and the grace of perfect accom- 
plishment. For love's sweet sake we work 
there, and our daily work makes daily com- 
fort for those we love. The light of our 
windows shines far over the dimming world, 
and the warmth of our hearthstone is for 
those who choose to come homing in to us 
from afar. Peace that is not stagnation 
keeps the door of our hearts, and charity 
tempers our judgments. Ah, it will be easy 
to be what we should be — when we get 
home. 



The Day When Everything Is Wrong. 

It comes to all ; to some with much tre- 
quency; to others so infrequently as to be 
especially appalling; and some unfortunate 
mortals seem to play into the hands of fate 
with leads of various kinds of inadequacy, 
prolonging the pain of such days into a 
chronic disease; but no one entirely escapes. 

It is a comfort to recognize this, for art, 
whether lowly or lofty, skillfully ignores it. 
When, for example, you sit in a dentist's chair 
suffering the pangs of mechanical renovation, 
the gay simper of the calendar young lady on 
the wall is a mockery. Surely, you think, she 
never had to give up a charming lunch party 
for the doubtful joys of gold filling. Her 
pretty clothes never cost her a thought, and 
her hair is naturally wavy and up-standing. 
The heroines of the books we read enjoy a 
similar immunity. Trials come to them, but 
6S 



When Everything Is Wrong 6g 

trials of the nobler sort, such as any women of 
good taste might elect to undergo with grace 
and dignity. Poverty never betrays them into 
unsuitable clothing, nor does sorrow find them 
short of pocket-handkerchiefs. They bear 
reproach and calumny with equal sufficiency, 
never by any chance being put in the wrong 
by any little human weakness of their own 
cropping up at the crucial moment. We who 
admire and love them, weep over them, and 
would fain be like them, find their perfection 
a derision when we think of it from the depths 
of ignominy into which some little, little things 
have the power to betray us. 

Perhaps if we could know when this day 
of wrath and of judgment was to dawn upon 
us, we might prepare ourselves for it by vigil 
and fasting; but no token is given. A rainy 
morning may usher it in with a sudden sense 
of our unreadiness for the weather, and of the 
fact that a friend has borrowed our only avail- 
able umbrella and failed to return it; or, 
worse, that we ourselves are the borrowers 
and the remiss ones. Our short skirt is laid 



TO Every Day Essays 

up for repairs, and we cannot find our rubbers. 
This is an obvious and frequent beginning. 
On such days lawn parties are scheduled to 
come off, or we have an appointment with a 
telephoneless friend downtown, and cannot 
guess whether or not she will think the 
weather sufficient excuse for staying at home. 
The heavy clouds weigh upon our spirits, and 
the children clamorously contend that they 
cannot go to school in the rain. 

But it may be a bright day, the sun rising 
fair upon a hopeful world. You plan plea- 
sant things as you do your hair, and dress a 
bit carefully in readiness for out-of-doors just 
after breakfast. The breakfast bell does not 
ring at the appointed time, and you seize the 
opportunity to put on an extra touch or two 
of daintiness. You hang up the things about 
the room, straighten the bureau, and get an 
agreeable glow of conscious virtue as you con- 
template the pleasant orderhness about you; 
but at length you grow uneasy and descend to 
the kitchen. No one there ! All is silent, cold 
and empty. A brief investigation shows that 




SW fage 73 



When Everything Is Wrong yr 

Nora, the little-regarded but necessary one, 
is groaning in bed with the toothache, and 
Mary has not been home since she went out 
last night. You try to light the fire, using 
only the tips of your polished fingers. You 
get very warm, but the kitchen is still cold 
when your husband calls down and wants to 
know whatever is the matter with breakfast; 
he has an important engagement downtown. 
The children, when they discover the state of 
affairs, wail that they will be late to school; 
and you give all of them the kind of break- 
fast food that doesn't require cooking, and 
make some very poor coffee with water that 
hasn't boiled yet. Your husband's opinion of 
your capacities is poorly concealed behind the 
morning paper; and you are wondering 
whether, if you discharge Mary, as you 
ought, you will ever get another cook. 

This is the moment that Henry, your eldest 
boy, chooses to announce that you must write 
his teacher an excuse for his absence from 
school last week; and Mabel reminds you, 
with a burst of tears, that you haven't yet 



7^ Every Day Essays 

visited her class-room, although you have 
promised ever so often; and Godfrey, the 
youngest, languidly refuses breakfast food 
and finds appetite only for eggs and fruit 
because he has such an awful headache. No, 
he doesn't want to stay home from school — 
he likes school well enough — but he doesn't 
see how he is going to manage to get there 
to-day. He just feels sick all over. Henry 
scoffs unfeelingly, and Godfrey kicks his shins 
under the table. Henry rises up to adminis- 
ter a stinging reproof; Godfrey dodges, runs 
behind your chair, and makes you spill the 
water you are drinking. Their father orders 
both boys to sit down and behave like gentle- 
men ; and then watches in disgust while God- 
frey takes his knife in his left hand and pro- 
ceeds to pull at his toast with the fork in his 
right, finally, with desperate quickness, bolt- 
ing most of the toast and the unbroken yolk 
of his egg in one triumphant gulp. Henry, 
in a hurry for school, takes advantage of 
the storm that rages around Godfrey to pour 
his cofkc into his saucer, and, startled by his 



When Ei'erything Is Wrong yj 

father's sudden glare In his direction, spills 
the brown fluid all over the last clean table- 
cloth. 

Mabel starts off in silent superiority, but 
finds that her bicycle-tire is soft and the pump 
out of order. She returns minus her dignity, 
and prances about frantically while the boys 
each accuse the other of having had it last, 
and the father gives her car fare to ride to 
school. It is too far to the cars; she is al- 
ready late; won't father drive her? she im- 
plores. No, he won't! He has something 
else to do besides looking after children when 
he pays for a houseful of women to do that 
work. He wouldn't have such a servant as 
Mary under any circumstances. He'd rather 
do the cooking himself. Pay her and send 
her off. As for the washing (of course it is 
Monday), send it to the laundry or pitch it 
into the alley — he doesn't care which. He 
should think that the women of this day of 
clubs and advancement ought to be able to 
manage a little thing like that without turning 
the whole house upside down. 



7^ Every Day Essays 

Indignation seizes you by the throat — you 
are lucky if it renders you speechless. You 
ask yourself if this is the love and cherish- 
ing he promised at the altar — you are lucky 
if you do not ask him. Mabel goes off in a 
storm of tears, stopping at the mirror in the 
hall to see how she looks when storming. 
Henry's manner is as loftily scornful as his 
father's, but he condescends to biff Godfrey 
as he passes. Godfrey flies into a rage that 
makes him forget his headache, and flings out 
of the house vowing vengeance; and you are 
left to face the soiled dishes, Nora's tooth- 
ache, Mary's slyness, and the laundry ques- 
tion all alone. 

While you are struggling ineffectually with 
these diflUculties the postman comes, and you 
tear open your letters in the desperate hope 
of a little relief. You take the bills first, so 
as to have them over with, and find each 
one larger than you expected or than it has 
any right to be. The silk skirt you had sent 
up on approval, and went downtown to re- 
turn in a pouring rain in order to have It 



When Ez'erything Is Wrong 75 

credited before the first of the month, so that 
your husband might not be appalled at the 
size of the bill, is still charged to you, and 
you rush to the telephone to have the bill 
altered. It is long before you get any re- 
sponse, and it is evident that you are a very 
unpopular person when you demand the com- 
plaint desk. The first clerk who comes knows 
nothing about the matter and calls another. 
The only one who has your affairs in hand, 
it seems, is out, and won't be back until after- 
noon. Call again. 

The next letter is from your least-desirable 
relative, who announces, in unmistakable 
terms, that she is coming to pay you a visit 
on the third — and that is the day of your 
dinner party ! The next tells you of a spe- 
cial club meeting called for that same day — 
a meeting that promises some developments 
you wouldn't miss for the world. Another 
letter is in the well-known writing of an old 
friend of your own. You open it, with only 
a hasty glance at the superscription, to dis- 
cover that she is writing to your husband, 



y6 Every Day Essays 

asking him If you are ill or in any deep dis- 
tress: you have not written her for so long 
that she Is worried, and therefore she has 
ventured to trouble him, etc. The last Is a 
bulky epistle from a woman who insists upon 
regarding you as a sort of literary patroness — 
Heaven only knows why. She intrusts you 
with her precious paper to be read before the 
Literary Society. Will you promise to give 
her your frank and unbiased opinion of it? 

But the list grows wearisome. One might 
prolong it mercilessly, and yet not exhaust 
the host of little bothers familiar to us all 
— bothers which beset all alike, which no 
system can wholly prevent, no foresight fully 
anticipate, no sweetness of disposition and 
competence of intellect altogether withstand. 
Before these foes the mightiest of us lie pros- 
trate now and then, Gullivers waking from 
sleep to find ourselves enmeshed in ignoble 
webs, tied at a hundred points to the lowly 
soil. Whatever we attempt goes wrong: If 
we write a letter, we find ourselves unexpect- 
edly out of good note-paper; the envelopes 



When Everything Is IVrong yy 

are of all sizes but the right one; the ink has 
thickened overnight; and the pen suddenly 
becomes superannuated. If we attempt a 
story on the typewriter, the letters double, we 
write on the same line twice and spoil a 
whole page, or, inspiration falling suddenly 
upon us, we click away frantically, only to dis- 
cover that our paper has been exhausted, and 
we have confided a brilliant paragraph to the 
unrecording roller. Our newly washed hair 
refuses to hold hair-pins and combs, and we 
come home from a windy trip downtown 
looking like a second-hand hair-dresser's 
model. If we have a kitten, it chooses the 
most objectionable moment to get under our 
feet. The dog leaps upon us in riotous wel- 
come, regardless of muddy paws. If we need 
milk for dinner, it has soured. If we want to 
drive, the horse has lost a shoe and must go 
at once to the blacksmith's. 

Even our power of speech deserts us at such 
times, and plays all sorts of pranks upon us. 
We are sure, for one thing, to forget the 
names of friends we are trying to introduce. 



^8 Every Day Essays 

We tell funny stories, and discover, aghast, 
that we are twitting on painful facts. Words 
twist on our tongues, and we out-Malaprop 
Mrs. Malaprop herself. I remember an ex- 
perience to the point : A friend of mine had 
the trading-stamp habit, and told me with 
misplaced pride of the rug she had bought 
with stamps representing about a hundred 
dollars' worth of somewhat forced shopping. 
I went to see her when such a sirocco of mis- 
fortune was blowing about me, having act- 
ually gone calling in a desperate attempt to 
escape my fate. Seeing a red and blue rug 
rather sharply out of keeping with her other 
things, I inquired, with every agreeable in- 
tention, whether that was the rug she had 
bought at the five and ten cent store ! 

It was in a similar gloomy penumbra that 
another friend moved when he found himself 
at an evening gathering of some sort, and 
saw, at the other end of the long parlors, a 
lady whom he knew. There were two of these 
ladies in the same family, closely resembling 
each other; but they were mother and daugh- 



When Everything Is Wrong jg 

ter. My friend studied the situation for some 
time, and, catching the lady's eye before he 
was quite master of his recollections, rushed 
up to her with impetuous cordiality, exclaim- 
ing: 

" Why, how do you do, Mrs. ? Do 

you know, at the other end of the room I act- 
ually thought you were your own daughter! " 

" Sir," said the lady, with freezing dignity, 
" I am the daughter! " 

If your own tongue does not betray you in 
some such fashion, those of your children 
surely will. On such a day, for example, we 
were dining some youngish maiden ladies, 
very refined, correct, and delightful. The 
children had begged for the privilege of re- 
maining at the table, and, thinking to give 
them some of the benefits of good society, and 
disregarding the fact that It was a day dedi- 
cated to mischance, we had consented. Rich- 
ard, our elder son, wore his sweetest smile, 
and was amiably sociable. 

" Miss Blank," he asked, beginning the 
conversation as strange persons addressing 

6 



So Every Day Essays 

him usually begin it, "how old are you?" 

She rose to the situation with ready tact. 
" Oh, between sixty and seventy," she said, 
smiling. 

"Dear me!" exclaimed Richard, quite 
appalled. " Then why don't you get mar- 
ried?" 

After the laugh had subsided, our little 
daughter was heard explaining to the other 
lady that there had been a fly in the cream; 
but she didn't mind that because it wasn't 
squashed; while our youngest, growing sleepy 
after the third course, inquired suddenly how 
on earth they could eat so much; he was 
through long ago ! 

But this is prolonging the list. After all, 
it is a comfort to tell one's woes, and. In the 
telling, to recognize that they are the common 
heritage of mankind. This reflection Is much 
more truly anci lastingly consolatory than the 
one so often urged upon our attention by 
glibly sympathetic friends, and, of late, whole- 
somely gibed at In some popular cartoons — 
the reflection, namely, that It might have been 



When Everything Is Wrong Si 

worse. Your children might be dead or non- 
existent instead of inconvenient and difficult; 
your husband might be a drunkard or a rav- 
ing maniac instead of absorbed in his own 
affairs when you need help with yours; your 
letters, like Mrs. Somebody's, might contain 
news of the loss of all your fortune; — and so 
on, in a list calculated to create the blackness 
of a midnight in the sunniest soul. To add 
to the effectiveness of this style of argument, 
you are invited to take an imaginary trip to 
the slums and the prisons, and there to con- 
template the wrecks of humanity to whom 
your present tribulations would seem like the 
joys of the blest. Your weakened and baf- 
fled soul dimly discerns that there is some- 
thing wrong in endeavoring to extract joy 
from the contemplation of so much unedify- 
ing misery; but you find in yourself such an 
affinity for everything dark and disagreeable 
that, likely enough, you take the trip sug- 
gested, and get so immersed in the thickly 
bubbling mud Dante tells of that It Is doubt- 



S2 Every Day Essays 

till if you ever get yourself wholly cleansed 
from it. 

Or perhaps you misguldedly try silence and 
martyrdom, persuading yourself that the first 
is self-control, and the second merely interest- 
ing resignation. This makes life almost un- 
hearable for your immediate friends and 
relatives, but has the advantage of drawing 
the trouble to a sufficient though painful head. 

Or, still more misguidedly, you may go off 
into tears, preceded by a vigorous expression 
of your disappointment In your husband as a 
help and defense In time of trouble. He 
won't like this, and you may get into a condi- 
tion where little troubles look little because 
you have such a big one in hand. 

Such a result, indeed, is not altogether to 
be scorned ; for a big trouble enables us to 
bring our reserve strength to bear. To be 
fretted and rasped out of all lovableness by 
a series of mosquito-like annoyances is un- 
dignified at best, and stings our self-love 
beyond endurance; but there is something 
romantically Interesting, worthy of the powers 



When Everything Is Wrong 8j 

we feel within ourselves, in a genuine trouble. 
In a certain sense we rejoice to find our- 
selves elected to bear it. Therefore, like the 
famous doctor who threw all his patients into 
fits because he was death on fits, we are some- 
times fairly driven to magnify our pygmy 
disasters to a graspable size. 

From the elevation of genuine grief, on 
the contrary, we all of us see, at some period 
or other, the true proportions of things, and, 
seeing them, are enabled to smile and endure 
where otherwise we should writhe. Some 
writer has said that the thing American 
women most lack Is a sense of perspective. 
Whether this is especially true of American 
women or not, certainly the possession of this 
sense is a great source of consolation. To 
see things, while yet we smart under their 
pricks, as we shall see them when we look 
back on them from a distance, this enables 
us to lay hold upon grace — the grace either of 
patience or of wholesome and refreshing 
laughter. 

Many of us have found this latter way 



84- Every Day Essays 

out the easier. Recently a woman I knew 
lost her pocket-book at a most trying junc- 
ture. She lived out-of-town, and having been 
to the city on urgent business, discovered her 
loss just as she was about to get upon the 
train which was to take her back to her hus- 
band and young baby. It was the last train 
for that day, and her ticket was in the missing 
purse, as was also all her money. She did not 
know where to look for help, or what her 
baby was to do without her. As she walked 
the platform in frantic distress, and watched 
the unfeeling train draw away from her, she 
said aloud in the poignancy of her desire, 
" Oh, if I could only see something funny in 
it, I could bear it!" It is a good prayer, 
and brings its own answer. 

Next to a sense of humor, which is the 
sanest and most certainly available means of 
escape, mere physical absence has its advan- 
tages. Just to leave your work and your 
worries — your dishes in the sink, your beds 
unmade, your marketing undone, and, if need 
be, your doors unlocked — and go forth into 



When Everything Is Wrong Sj 

the great outside world, is to run with eager 
feet towards peace. It is good to go and see 
a friend and talk your trouble over; but it 
is better to go out under the sky and for- 
get it. Let the unhurried world of nature 
preach to you of steadfast peace and growth 
under unceasing change. Let the big empty 
sky replace the cobwebbed ceiling of your 
house-bound consciousness, and flood the 
darkened places with wholesome sunshine. 
When you go back to your dishes, they will 
almost wash themselves, for all the good 
fairies of out-of-doors will come home with 
you and lend a willing hand to your work. 

To be able to do this requires, of course, 
some just perception of the relative impor- 
tance of yourself and your bothers — the sense 
of perspective, in short. But perspective, 
while it reduces near mole-hills to their 
proper size, also lets us know the true nature 
of the mountains lurking behind. The little 
worries are really little, but their work in the 
soul is not little. Nothing so searches out 
our hidden weaknesses as the days when 
everything is wrong. They are the house- 



86 Every Day Essays 

cleaning days of the soul, when every un- 
savory negligence is haled into view, and the 
house-cleaner must needs get ruffled and dis- 
ordered in the effort to restore order. 

These lowly places in which we toil un- 
heeded of men, ashamed of ourselves, and 
feeling that victory is merely decency, are 
the valleys that shall be exalted when every 
mountain and hill of more glorious achieve- 
ment shall be laid low. If we recognize this 
and keep our minds, as far as may be, upon 
the spiritual equanimities we would fain 
achieve, and refuse, again as far as may be, 
to be led astray into desperate efforts to re- 
store the merely physical order at whatever 
expense to the spiritual, we shall emerge from 
the fray inevitably a little dusty and dishev- 
eled, but with a surer insight. It is some- 
thing to be able to conquer, from meekness 
under ignoble trials, the inheritance of the 
earth — and nothing less than this is the final 
reward of those who struggle faithfully with 
the pestiferous nothings that sometimes 
threaten to overwhelm us. 




See page S3 



Pictures of Peace. 



I sat by the river-bank at twilight. Bob, 
my fox-terrier, foraged in the distance, his 
short tail gayly upright, his active white 
body darting among the tree-trunks. There 
was no contemplation for him while birds 
could be scared up from the ground and 
squirrels smelled out in the hollow trees. 
Aquiver from the tip of his inquiring nose 
to the missing tip of his tail, he sought for 
sensations, found them, loved them, and 
lived in them. The life of nature seemed 
visibly to flow into and out of him, a stream 
as real as the stream at my feet. 

This, too — the river I love — is full of life. 
There is the life of the little mosses and reeds 
by the brim, and that of the great brooding 
trees, drinking it in through their brown 
roots twisting out among the lesser growths 
into the clear amber water. These roots are 
87 



88 Every Day Essays 

sometimes fringed with young rootlets, eager 
suckers dripping with bountiful nourishment. 
In among them queer insect creatures snuggle 
content. The very stones roll softly with the 
rolling river. 

You can imagine the fresh-water clams 
under the ooze, peacefully letting their shells 
fall open. The little fishes swim over and 
under, and in and out, and round about, in a 
languid, smooth dance, keeping close together. 
The larger fishes, noses up current, wave 
luxurious tails and fins, opening and shutting 
pink-lined gills. And the nourishing mother 
of all, the broad-bosomed river, moves on its 
steadfast way to the sea, unburdened, 
minished, finding life in giving it. 

Across, on the island, the sheep crop the 
short grass. Their heavy wool protects them 
from the cool of the evening as from the heat 
of the day. One of them, on my side of the 
river, foolishly terrified by my triumphant 
Bob, runs down the bank, plunges into the 
shallows, and swims across to his comrades on 
the island. His wet sides heave with his pant' 



Pictures of Peace Sp 

ing, but across the water one can feel his sat- 
isfaction as he gazes at the chidden httle dog 
whose collar I hold. Safe, he begins again 
the serious business of life — grazing and 
growing wool. 

Pressed down by an unrelenting hand, Bob 
lies for a few moments, as resistant as a coiled 
spring, his pink tongue lolling. The bright 
eyes set and close, the tense body relaxes, and 
all In another minute the tired dog lies against 
me, sound asleep. 

Now I have time to be still, to forget to 
think or to notice. The faint tints are fading 
from the sky, the soft wind blows, the river's 
song rises clear. Near me a breath of milky 
fragrance, a steady cropping, here and there a 
darkling bulk, mean that the cows are covet- 
ing the grass on which I rest. Their empty 
udders swing light. The cows have been fed 
at the barn, when they were milked, and are 
eating now for pure luxury. 

But what is this rubbing against my tree- 
trunk and my back? What this recurrent, 
throaty growl, this rumbling low joggle of 



po Every Day Essays 

friendliness? It is Tom, my Maltese cat, 
waking from the day's long drowse as the sun 
goes down, slipping forth in the gray even- 
ing, invisible in his likeness to it, silent, swift, 
with eyes that open and shut like a stoked 
furnace at night. This is his hour, the hour 
that sets him gliding swiftly along in the dim- 
ness, far from home, intent to explore the 
world and the joys that are in it. And here 
in his path he finds an empty-handed mis- 
tress, idly dreaming by the river. He pauses 
to greet me, making songs in the depths of his 
throat; but when I try to draw him into my 
lap for a warm cuddle he grows slim and 
smooth, and slips away between my hands. 

The birds in the trees above have ceased 
their chirping. They rustle among the 
branches, and are still. Hanging their idle 
leaves unresponsive to the evening air, the 
trees too have gone to sleep. In the island 
marsh, half-way across the river, the frogs 
have begun their concert. The tree-toads are 
shrilling their antiphon to the hushed birds. 
The river alone is as before, awake and sufE- 



Pictures of Peace pi 

cient in the night as in the day, moving, un- 
faltering, to the sea. But it has drawn a gray 
mist over its face, and its song is of hidden 
things. I must go home. I wonder where 
the Httle fishes sleep? 

Here alone in the stubble field, beneath 
bare boughs I sit. We are facing the coming 
winter, the world and I together. I lean, for 
companionship, close to the one tree standing 
in the field. The ground is cold with frost, 
though soft yet from the spring-time plough- 
ing; the grasses the corn used to hide as it 
waved far above them in the summer air, 
now have the sunshine and the frost to them- 
selves. Perhaps great thoughts in my mind 
are growing from the little idle thoughts of 
the hour — who knows? Early this morning 
these grasses were clothed in bridal white; 
now they are gracious shades of gray and tan, 
warm wine-color near the roots. Their deh- 
cate tops, tasseling bravely in emulation of 
the corn, are rich with seeds. Even the 
grasses are ready for winter — ready for rest, 
and, after that, for next year's growth. 



P& Every Day Essays 

" Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of 
the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is 
cast into the oven, shall He not much more 
clothe you, O ye of little faith? " 

This, my tree, is an apple-tree, standing 
broad and bountiful among the shocks of 
corn. It does not look as if fruit-bearing were 
easy. Its short trunk is contorted with effort; 
its branches grow as they can at ungainly 
angles. They look as if they had started 
heavenward in their youth, but later had been 
borne steadily earthward with the weight of 
years and of fruit, till they spread horizontal, 
yearning over the fields. It is a motherly tree, 
full of wrinkles and gnarls, with young off- 
shoots springing gayly from the level branches 
straight up toward the sky. I think they feel 
sure that they will never bend, w^hatever 
weight they bear; or break, whatever wind 
may blow. There is a dry crackle as of 
laughter above me, as the wind shakes the 
few remaining leaves. Most of them have 
already fallen, pushed off by the crowding 
buds; the bare twigs are knobbed with 



Pictures of Peace pj 

promise. What, old tree ! With the burden 
of years upon you, do you hope still, in the 
near presence of winter? While I — 

Pleasant play-houses these corn-shocks 
would make. Wigwams they are, full of 
food, well supplied against famine. Their 
plumed heads nod to the breezes like the 
feathered head-dresses of hospitable Indians, 
welcoming even the stranger to share their 
full store. 

The year's work is over; the field is no 
longer busy with growth — yet has it ever been 
busy? Has it ever done aught beyond let- 
ting the sun and the rain cherish and feed it, 
the kindly laws of nature take sufficient effect? 
Here is all the rich product of labor, with 
none of its exhaustion; here the hving faith 
resting serene in good works. I, too, lying 
close against the earth, will yield me to the 
laws of growth and of rest. W^e will all be 
still together — all of us here in the field — un- 
knowing, yet not dead, our lives secure within 
us; played upon by pure air, warmed by the 
sunshine, soothed into quiescence by the 



p/ Every Day Essays 

pointed fingers of the frost — unafraid, un- 
rejoicing, in utter peace beneath the sky. 

I have carried the baby into my own room, 
to put him to sleep before the fire. The chil- 
dren have all had their early supper, and the 
others are frolicking in the nursery with their 
father — he enjo)^s this good-night frolic as 
much as they do. Baby has played until he 
is tired out, and must come with me into 
the quiet and go to sleep. The noise of the 
laughing children still reaches us, softened by 
distance and curtained doorways. The 
drowsing baby starts and turns toward the 
door. 

No, sweetheart; no more play for mother's 
boy to-night. It is sleepy-time now. See the 
pretty fire; how it dances up the dark chim- 
ney. And see, over there, how it shines on the 
walls and looks at itself in the long mirror. 
And hear the crackling, snapping song it 
sings — singing baby to sleep. 

Would you like to stretch your toes to it? 
Well, turn over on mother's lap. Oh, you 
curly thing! You fairly hug mother's knees 



<; 



cn-tVSSN f"■V^V^^>q^^\^W,^■^^^^^'<^ ' ^^ ^ . V- ■■ ^^^"^. ■t-^^^'ij-' ' - J.j; 




e are farcing the coming v/inter, 
Ibe^X^orld and I together 




See page qr 



Pictures of Peace g^ 

with all your little self, as you lie there on 
your stomach. Uncurl your toes to the pleas- 
ant warmth, and see what the new muscles 
in the backs of your legs can do. Stretch and 
breathe, cuddle up to mother, and be happy, 
littlest. 

Shall I rub your back awhile? Ah, what a 
good loose flannel gown this is! My hand 
goes 'way up to your darling, darling shoul- 
ders. The sleeves are just big enough to let in 
two of my fingers, curving along the smooth 
little arms. Now across — and up — and down. 
Do you like it, love-bird? A kiss I must 
have, though it wake you — here at your waist, 
where the two dimples hide. Did it bother 
you, poor dear? Well, that Is part of the 
price of mothers. 'Sh! 'Sh! I'll rub again 
— across — and down — and up — with a gentle 
trot, and a little rock, and a murmured snatch 
of song: 

" Bye, baby — bye — bye ! " 

Now gently I lift you into my arms. The 
blue eyes I love are closed, the drooping head 
rests upon my bosom. A long sigh of sweetest 

7 



()6 Ez'cry Ihiy Essays 

breath, an utter yielding of the flower-soft 
body, and I sing again, with a swelhng throat, 

" Hush, my dear, lie still ami slumber — " 

Why does my heart ache so? And what is 
it for which I long, now that my arms and 
heart are full? 

" Holy angels guard thy bed — " 

Yes, that is it. There arc angels near — 
angels who love little babies, who know how 
to be all love and graciousness, who never 
fail, as T fail. They fill the dim corners of 
the room. I can almost see their robes wav- 
ing in the waving firelight. In my soul T feel 
their presence, helping me to bear the weight 
of tenderness that oppresses me. Ah, Lord, 
how did You ever dare to trust me with this 
little child — Your own precious little child? 

He is sound asleep in my arms; and I lie 
back in the Everlasting Arms, safe in a 
greater love than this that is too great for my 
heart. The children in the nursery have 
dropped into silence. Their father tiptoes 



Pictures of Peace pj 

past my door, but I feel his love as, afraid to 
speak, he hfts the curtain and looks in at us. 

At last I am clear of the city and can 
dream as I will under the stars and the sky. 
Oh, it is good to hav^e the sky to one's self, 
unfretted by a single roof! I breathe in deep 
breaths of it. There are not even trees about 
me, just here, though a row of them stands 
on the edge of the further field, a dehcate 
band of lace against the softly luminous 
horizon. I am blissfully alone under the clear 
breadth of the heavens, empty of all littleness. 

When I grow tired of gazing straight up 
and up, I rest mv eyes on that slender line of 
trees, rest them that they may search further 
in their next upward sweep. The sky is so 
unthinkably vast that I find it tends to make 
you lose not only your worries, but your full 
personal consciousness. To catch your breath, 
you need to drop nearer earth now and then; 
else you are in danger of losing your center, 
of having no point of intense feeling upon 
which to focus your perception of the immen- 



gB Every Day Essays 

sities. It is no wonder that certain wise men, 
watching the Oriental stars and moon, look- 
ing deep into the sky for night after night, 
should conceive of Nirvana as the uttermost 
state of the soul. For me, I choose to have a 
little nest of selfhood into which I may gather 
my thoughts, hover over them, and bring 
forth something that has life. 

I never knew much of astronomy. How 
many millions of miles away is the sun? At 
any rate, it is only a few thousand miles of 
earth that now hides him from me, and lets 
me see him only as he is reflected in the face 
of the moon. And she is a cold, dead world? 
It may be true, but it is not the truth for me. 
I like best to love her just as she looks — 
silver-bright, golden-bright — which is it? — 
with a dim halo about her, like the loves of 
the ages made visible. Think of the love 
that has gone out to her, the loves she has 
cherished. Dear Lady Moon, they are blind 
who call you dead. 

And these stars — I cannot bear the thought 
of them as they really are. I like Shake- 



Pictures of Peace pp 

peare's sensitive touch of description, as he 
catches the hght of them for an instant in a 
boy's mirror, and plays with it: 

" Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold." 

Patines — those whirling suns, the centers 
of mighty world-systems! Bright gold — 
those globes of liquid fire! Yet Shakespeare 
knew the human heart. It is crushed under 
the thought of millions of suns, awhirl in un- 
lit space — of violet gases, and green and yel- 
low, flaring tremendous on the eyeless void. 
The human heart — my own trembling human 
heart — is not able to love such stupendous 
things. Let me look back again to my near 
and friendly trees. 

What is that — a panting breath, drawing 
nearer and nearer? A rush of sparks, au- 
daciously flung at the unwinking stars; a roar, 
a jangle, a rhythmical clatter and roll, and 
the train speeds by, across the quiet country, 
under the awful sky. A reek of smoke ob- 
scures the fair face of the moon, a harsh cry 
dies out along the still reaches of the air, and 



LcfC. 



loo Every Day Essays 

the train is gone. It showed for the moment 
hke a great dragon hastening through the 
dark, breathing fire and snorting, its sides set 
with even, bright scales. 

And above here, in the dark fields of space, 
another dragon moves, noiseless. I see the 
glittering scales on its sides. I know not the 
Man who holds command, who looks ahead 
over the way we go; yet I can go to sleep, 
like those people In the train. What am I, 
truly, shivering and thinking In my allotted 
section of time and space, but one bit of sub- 
stance under law, carried along with the rest? 
These stars obey, and whirl, and shine, burn- 
ing for untold ages unconsumed, in an order 
that reaches even my little eye and comforts 
even my foolish heart. How shall I plan 
rebellion, then, or find a fear worth holding? 

An insect trills In the grass at my ear; 
a fire-fly flashes past, a tiny copyist of the 
stars. The Impudent atom ! — yet it, too, is 
under law, riding along secure in the great 
world-dragon. If one can light a little spark 
under one's wings, shall one not? It may 



Pictures of Peace loi 

match the stars' far glory, to some near in- 
sect eye. That undaunted chirp rises clear 
again — a song in the face of the sky and the 
night. What Power is this that orders alike 
the universes of the endless heavens and the 
insect lives in the lowly grass? I could send 
a kiss into the sky if I could forget the mil- 
lions and billions and trillions of miles up 
there. 

Oh, I will get me back to the town where 
there are huddling houses and crowds of 
things. It glows cozily along the horizon. 
My trouble lurks there, I know, but I know 
also that there is a Power that can speed me 
along my appointed way, with all my weights 
upon me, as easily as it flicked that little 
train across half a little continent. And even 
in the noisy, bustling town, within the close 
four walls of home, in the firelight glow, are 
peace and rest. 



Coming Doivn in the World, 



It is easier to bear success than to bear 
failure. There are those who, In theory, 
doubt this statement; but in practice ev-ery 
one is eagerly willing to assume whatever 
burdens success may impose. To succeed is 
to put a certain polish on the cheapest wood. 
Although the coarse grain may be thereby 
thrown into relief, some one is sure to admire 
it, and it has, to any eye, a certain force and 
individuality. 

Failure, on the contrary, dims all that it 
touches. The whole world questions the 
value of the man whose outlines are blurred 
by it. Every one knows why he has failed, 
and nearly every' one tells him so. A dozen 
times a day, while the wound is fresh, zealous 
friends dress it with mustard. He winces — 
and this is, to them, another evidence of weak- 
ness. 




See pit^'^e q4 



Coming Down in the World loj 

The worst of the pain hes in the pride that 
will not die at once — that, far from accepting 
these friendly diagnoses, has quite another 
explanation to offer. We all remember 
Thackeray's moving picture of ruined Mr. 
Sedley, conning his useless papers, and prov- 
ing to every one, to the waiter in the dingy 
coffee-house as well as to pitiful Captain Dob- 
bin, that the fault was all Bonaparte's. " And 
I say that the escape of Boney from Elba was 
a damned imposition and plot, sir, in which 
half the powers of Europe were concerned, 
to bring the funds down and ruin the country. 
That's why I am here, William. That's why 
my name's in the Gazette. Why sir? Be- 
cause I trusted the Emperor of Russia and 
the Prince Regent." 

Thackeray does not tell us about Mrs. 
Sedley's actions at this moment, but doubt- 
less she also had her little shams. We have 
fair warrant for imagining that her manner 
to the faithful servant who continued work- 
ing for her without pay was as lofty as ever. 
Mrs. Sedley would omit no customary de- 



104- Every Day Essays 

mand, and level no barriers of rank. Her 
nearest approach to familiarity would be the 
cry for sympathy. 

" You know, Blenkinsop, how well I used 
to live. I ask you, can any reasonable per- 
son expect me to drink such tea as this? " 

The need of money is so sordid and de- 
pressing a need that it is next to im- 
possible to preserve a lofty ideal in the 
face of it. It is not so much the 
mere privation of accustomed luxuries 
that hurts — though that does hurt — as the 
inevitable shabbishness and ugliness that re- 
sults from financial inability to keep up with 
repairs. Who does not know the sense of 
degradation that comes from covering a hole 
in the carpet with a rug? F>om shabby bed- 
covers? From the association of solid silver 
with nicked china and an insufficient supply 
of table-linen? When we fall behind we find 
ourselves living in a hodge-podge of incon- 
gruous and unbeautiful wreckage, and our 
surroundings daily mortify our taste and our 
self-respect. 



Coming Down in the World /05 

If we can maintain ourselves sufficiently to 
work slowly through the debris, ordering and 
arranging it as light dawns upon us, we may 
be rewarded by an intimate perception of what 
is genuinely beautiful and necessary to beau- 
tiful living. Such a perception is as rare as 
it is precious in our commercial civilization, 
where, as Professor Veblin so scorchingly 
points out, the love of ostentatious waste has 
vitiated nearly all our conceptions of decency. 
To those of us who fall behind may be left, 
possibly, the discovery of the essentials. We 
may discover the fitness of oiled dining-room 
tables when our fine linen wears out; and 
gain a new respect for space and sunshine In 
our rooms, as the bric-a-brac breaks. Of 
course the danger is that we will do nothing 
of the kind, but will take to passe-par-tout- 
ing illustrated newspaper supplements and 
making puffy sofa-pillows out of scraps. 
Such imitation ostentation is even worse than 
genuine ostentation. We wear out our spirits 
in the effort to attain it, and dip our scant 
bread in bitterness in the effort to preserve 



io6 Every Day Essays 

it. Why not let everything that, under the 
stress of daily living, proves itself to be rub- 
bish, go on the rubbish heap, leaving a re- 
poseful emptiness behind it? 

The trouble is that nothing of this clearance 
happens all at once. In our desperate mo- 
ments we long for a conflagration to sweep 
our rooms of all the accumulation that is, as 
sighing housewives say, too good to throw 
away and not good enough to keep. It is 
hard so to balance ourselves as to endure it 
while it is with us, and to rejoice at its gradual 
removal. Yet if we succeed in this, have we 
not done well? Is not this genuine poise and 
patience — a possession laid up in the skies — 
a fair offset to the pain of failure? 

Although I am thus preaching the virtues 
of resignation, and of making the best of 
things (and oh! the preaching is easier than 
the practice!), I am not meaning to uphold, 
even by implication, a state of society and of 
public opinion which fills financial failure full 
of such unnecessary suffering. I do not be- 
lieve there ought to be poverty or ignominy 



Coining Dozv'u in the World lo^ 

for any but the willfully vicious and idle — also 
for the willfully greedy and self-indulgent. 
But that belief, though it is worth holding and 
stating — worth some effort to bring into ac- 
tion — cannot affect, very appreciably, our im- 
mediate problem. That problem Is how best 
to huddle together for warmth, while we wait 
the end of our winter of discontent. 

No one need be less lonely than we who 
come down in the world. By force of circum- 
stances we become East SIders, and on the 
East Side, you know, millions of our fellows 
live. Having come here, is there any reason 
why we should not bring with us such graces 
and beauties of the West Side as will bear 
transplantation? We may be compelled to 
leave behind our liveried servants, and our 
expensive gewgaws, but who shall deprive us 
of our good manners? of our books? of the 
habit of worthy conversation? We are social 
settlers by force, perhaps, but why any the 
less social settlers? 

Here are our new neighbors eager to greet 
us. No wealth now builds its hard barrier 



toB Every Day Essays' 

between the wide reaches of humanity and 
our own souls. We bathe in the great ocean 
of hfe, no longer cooped in a ridiculous bath- 
ing-machine of convention. The tides sweep 
over us, surging around the globe, following 
mysterious but irresistible leadings. We 
know ourselves as but one of many like atoms 
— oh, shall we spoil the splendid sense of kin- 
ship by insistence on such scummy excrescences 
as we may have brought with us from the 
stagnant back-water reaches where we used 
to dwell ? 

The other day, while meditating on these 
things, I chanced to be in the big arch-way 
of the Grand Central Station, in Chicago. 
The rain percolated through the sooty atmos- 
phere and insistent cabmen tendered me im- 
possible luxuries in the way of transportation. 
No good, warm, democratic, undeviating 
trolley clanged its way to my rescue. A mile 
or so distant, probably, some ships were pass- 
ing up or down the river, and thousands of 
human beings unwillingly waited on their pas- 
sage. Beside me stood a boy of about ten 



Coming Damn in the World locj 

years of age, in a neat soldier-cap and over- 
coat. Above the velvet collar of his coat 
showed a white collar and a stiffly-tied blue 
necktie. I have since thought that the collar 
may have been celluloid, but one can't easily 
tell, in Chicago. At any rate, I felt distinctly 
set at my distance by it. No child so obvious- 
ly equal to the demands of our civilization 
could need any friendliness of mine. So we 
stood, side by side, wrapped in a common 
misery, under the big stone arch, silent and 
uncommunicative, when my eye happened to 
fall on his shoes. They were shabby and old, 
and the shoe-strings were tied in a dozen 
knots. I saw at once that he had on his Sun- 
day coat and hat, and his every-day trousers 
and shoes. I had a knot in my own shoe- 
strings, and my heart warmed to him. 

So, presently, I asked him, very humbly, 
when he thought the car would be along; 
and he said, beginning with a fine show of 
indifference, but with a chin that trembled a 
little toward the end, that he thought it would 
be along pretty soon, now: he had already 



iTo Every Day Assays 

been waiting a half-hour. We fell into con- 
versation, and I learned that he had accom- 
panied a friend of his mother's to the train, 
carrying her bag for her, and that he was ex- 
pected to return by exactly the same route — 
the only one he knew. He had just seven 
cents in his pocket, and he could not go by a 
route involving a change of cars, even if he 
knew how. I could have made the seven 
cents ten, or even fifteen, if he would have 
permitted it, but I could not supply the miss- 
ing knowledge. 

We kept on waiting, and presently two or 
three cabmen, leaning on their whip-stocks, 
entered into our discussion of ways and means, 
and a policeman and a red-capped railroad 
porter joined us. They joked with us in a 
friendly way, but could offer no help to a boy 
whose whole supply of worldly knowledge 
seemed to be that he was to get off at Lincoln 
Avenue, walk to Mallory's grocery, and then 
he knew his way. When the belated car final- 
ly crashed upon us around the corner, it was 
hailed with delight by a round dozen of sym- 



Coming Dozmi in the World iii 

pathizers and we boarded it out of quite a 
circle of benevolence. I reflected that a 
knotted shoe-string, notwithstanding its un- 
deniable inferiority to a whole shoe-string, 
has some distinct advantages of its own. 

Contrariwise, I have just been talking to 
a dear old lady, compounded of all the vir- 
tues and many of the graces, who is to-day 
suffering under the grievous loneliness of old 
age, uncomforted by any but rather distant 
relatives. " I knew nearly every one in this 
town once," she told me, " but after I was 
married, and we moved out on the farm, I 
lost them all. They were good to me, they 
used often to drive out, and to this day they 
invite me to their receptions, but — you know 
— I couldn't dress right. A farmer's wife 
can't. I remember when Mr. — (she named 
a prominent citizen) drove out with his young 
wife, I was on my knees in the strawberry- 
bed, and of course I was all dirty. They 
were nice about it, but I didn't return the 
call. I was never sure my clothes were just 
right, and I put off going. I have been put- 

8 



112 Every Day Essays 

ting it off for thirty years. And now I am 
alone. It's all wrong. I oughtn't to have 
been so proud, but I was. And I don't 
know " — she mused awhile — " I don't know 
as I really should have liked being with them, 
anyhow. Perhaps it's just as well — as it is." 

I rolled my hands comfortably in the kit- 
chen apron that had set her free to visit with 
me, and went with her to the gate. There I 
stood watching her as she crept up the road, 
a frail, gentle, sweet old soul, alone with the 
fast-coming night. And I was glad of the 
kitchen apron. 

Humbleness of spirit, and corresponding 
humbleness of vesture and housing, thus 
brings its own rich reward. It transports us 
from showy parks patrolled by policemen 
and inhabited by caged animals into a garden 
of loveliness. Therein forget-me-nots and 
heart's-ease bloom, and birds sing unafraid. 
Lovers wander down its shady isles, and 
friends meet rejoicing in its open places. 
Every one who enters this sweet garden suf- 
fers a sea-change; he does not strut, nor 



Coining Dmmi in the ll'orld 113 

boast, but opens his heart to you, the master 
of the garden, and shares with you its richest 
secrets. This sad old earth becomes for you 
a garden, a home, a place of pleasantness, full 
of friends who eagerly teach you and lead 
you when you need it, and turn to you for 
help when they need it. 

Yet over against this fair plaisance stands 
an angel with flaming sword. None but the 
fit may enter in. He does not bar out those 
who wear rags, nor insist too sternly upon 
cleanliness; but to the vulgarity of pretense 
he is enduringly severe. To this Man with 
the Manners of Heaven nothing so entirely 
proves unfitness for paradise as pretended 
meekness. It is even worse than pretended 
superiority. Only genuine meekness can win 
in at that gate — genuine meekness and its 
twin-sister, charity. And this is because 
meekness clears out eyes of self, and lets us 
see others, and charity makes us love what we 
see. 

Bunyan knew this place. In prison for 
debt — oh ! don't we know the prison ! its 



114 Every Day Essays 

bare walls, scrawled with the wails of Innu- 
merable other sufferers, its terrifying jailor, 
its tantalizing glimpses of outer sunshine! — 
in prison, I say, he saw the vision of the 
Valley of Humiliation, and thus he wrote of 
it: 

" Here a man shall be free from the noise 
and from the hurrying of this life. All states 
are full of noise and confusion, only the Val- 
ley of Humiliation is that empty and solitary 
place. * * * * " J)|j I say that our 
Lord had here in former days His country 
house, and that He loved here to walk? I 
will add — in this place, and to the people that 
live and trace these grounds, he has left a 
yearly revenue, to be faithfully paid them 
at certain seasons for their maintenance by 
the way, and for their further encouragement 
to go on pilgrimage." 




itllAvonder- filled eyes expecta^nt 01 ^^J 
f-dJiry marvels in a city -S" to re 



Sc'<' page 121 



The Spirit of Christmas, 



No matter when we begin our Christmas 
preparations, it is sure not to be early enough; 
the great holiday never finds us with that com- 
fortable sense of good work well done, which 
we have striven for. Nor is the failure wholly 
due to our own weakness and lack of fore- 
sight; something must be allowed for the 
fact that the approach of Christmas sharpens 
the memory and enlarges the heart. Early 
in Novem.ber, perhaps, we make out a list 
of those to whom we wish to give, this year; 
we may even begin the working of sofa pil- 
lows and center-pieces on the verandas of 
summer hotels when the thermometer stands 
at ninety and December is unthinkably dis- 
tant; but as time draws on we add name 
after name to our list, and then, on Christ- 
mas eve, suddenly discover that we have over- 
115 



ii6 Every Day Essays 

looked the last person In the world who could 
be expected to endure It. 

On this fatally long list — fatal to our peace 
of mind and serenity — are several names we 
wish we could scratch off, but dare not. This 
one has always given to us and we cannot lie 
In her debt with ease. This other Is a girl- 
hood's friend, no tie remaining, of all those 
that seemed so unbreakable, except this year- 
ly token of remembrance. That one Is a for- 
lorn old being whom no one loves — not even 
we ourselves. Perhaps If we did not send her 
something, she would have nothing to mark 
the day. She deserves nothing? That may 
be — deliver us from being remembered on 
Christmas day according to our deserts ! 

Reason as we may, from item to item, we 
are not altogether happy over this list. We 
cannot escape an uneasy feeling that, if we 
owe the gift, we owe more than the gift. We 
are haunted with a sense of hypocrisy that 
makes us tear up and rewrite the Inscrip- 
tions that accompany these reluctant offerings, 
In a futile attempt at sincerity. For our com- 



The Spirit of Christmas iiy 

fort let us remember that even a futile attempt 
may, in the long run, count for something; 
it is not mere wasted energy. We may per- 
form the act dutifully now, In the hope of 
sometime being able to perform it with a 
warmer feeling, recognizing, meanwhile, our 
narrow-heartedness, and trusting that succes- 
sive Christmasses may find us broader and 
sweeter. 

This is what has happened, in spite of 
himself, to that dear old father of ours. He 
has always declared that he did not believe 
in Christmas nonsense, and he has been severe 
with us over the lot of dead wood we keep in 
our list. He has pointed out that the chil- 
dren stand more in need of good warm clothes 
than of toys, and that habits of economy are 
good all the year round. He has voiced 
the protests of our own conscience when he 
has asked us, rather pointedly, whether we 
could attend to our household duties properly 
and spend so much time downtown. Never- 
theless, he has always gone secretly forth, at 
the last moment, and bought the most extrav- 



ii8 Every Day Essays 

agant things — enough to make him curse gift- 
giving all the rest of the year. To-morrow, 
however, he will fairly glow with hospitality 
and benevolence as he stands whetting his 
carving-knife over the great turkey and look- 
down the long table surrounded by the faces 
he loves best. 

Smiling gently back at him from the other 
end of the table sits the wife of his bosom — 
she who has seen to it that his business prin- 
ciples were annually overthrown in the in- 
terests of a higher economy. Never for one 
year of her meek and wifely existence has 
she obeyed her husband's injunctions in re- 
gard to gift-giving. She may have shed, for 
his sake, a few tears over her holiday efforts, 
but she has always gone on making them. 
She has performed all sorts of miracles with 
the housekeeping money to save enough for 
Christmas; and in the hot days of summer 
has crimsoned her face and risked heat-pros- 
tration and apoplexy over kettles of jelly and 
jam, in order to have her favorite gifts ready 
for the sons and daughters who tell her, half- 



The Spirit of Christmas up 

patronizingly, that no preserves were ever 
equal to hers. Her womanly intuition has 
taught her how much of the tenderness with 
which home is remembered, how much of its 
lasting influence, therefore, depends upon the 
fit observance of such special days. 

It Is true that we must spend much time 
in the crowded downtown districts at this 
season ; and there are exhausted moments 
when we share our father's opinion of the 
iniquity of it. We start out early in the 
morning, intending to get ahead of the crowd, 
but the crowd is equally determined to get 
ahead of us, and darkens the platforms of all 
the Elevated stations, hangs by straps In the 
aisles of all the trolleys, and Is wrung 
through the revolving storm-doors of all the 
big stores in a steady dark line, like one con- 
tinuous fabric. The women with babies In 
their arms, abhorred of clerk and shopper, 
patiently ask the prices of cheap toys, calcu- 
latingly finger men's sweaters, and shift the 
baby to the other hip while they meditate on 
the merits of a pair of small red shoes. Their 



I20 Every Day Essays 

sisters, with two or three older children cling- 
ing to them, are in greater difficulties, trying 
to pilot their little flock through the dense 
throng without unclasping hands. The chil- 
dren have bags and old purses full of care- 
fully hoarded pennies which they are sure to 
spill, bumping into every one's knees as they 
stoop to pick them up. Rising with flushed 
face from her efforts to assist the children 
and speak her mind, the mother finds the 
shop-girls in that vicinity abnormally busy 
and oblivious as she asks to see stick-pins, or 
ribbons, or colored crepe paper. But every 
now and then the woman heart in the breast 
of some tired clerk overflows, and the young- 
est child is set on the counter and kindly asked 
his name and age, while the boy is allowed to 
examine cameras and listen to the blatant 
phonograph. The crowd pushing past smiles 
vaguely in sympathy; and it is evident that 
though its mere mass may hold down the 
Christmas feeling for a time, it cannot quite 
crush it. 

This crowd downstairs, however, seems to 



The Spirit of Christmas 121 

have vast spaces between Its component atoms 
as compared with the crowd near Santa 
Claus's house on the fifth floor. How all 
these persons, mostly diminutive, have been 
swung safely up in those packed and palpi- 
tant cages, the elevators, is one of the un- 
considered marvels of the age; but here they 
stand, perspiring in December, with wonder- 
filled eyes expectant of fairy marvels in a 
city store. They are squeezed painfully for- 
ward by the press behind, jerked painfully 
upward and backward by anxious mothers, 
unable to see because of the unfeeling bulk 
and height of the grown persons about, 
shouted at by unintelligible but none the less 
terrifying policemen, and slowly, suffocating- 
ly, moved on to the promised end. They have 
long dreaded to lose this blissful experience 
by some unexpected attack of naughtiness; 
they have dreamed of it and talked of it for 
days; and at last here It is — to adult eyes 
nothing but an Indifferent, tired man, with a 
white beard and a big book, who plays his 
part very badly. But the children receive the 



122 Every Day Essays 

cheap box of checkers and crayons from his 
hands with rapture, and are shoved inertly out 
of the other door, too overawed for some 
moments to think of demanding the soda- 
fountain. 

We mothers, to whose childhood Santa 
Claus was never so obvious, who saw him 
only with the spiritual eye of the imagina- 
tion, falter before this commercial incarna- 
tion of our old familiar saint. Perhaps we 
find skill to suggest, without spoiling the 
play, that this is only a make-believe Santa 
Claus, very amusing, to be sure, but not half 
so fine or beautiful as the true one. We and 
the children may pity together those unfor- 
tunate persons who do not believe in Santa 
Claus at all, having been fooled by the mock 
personage downtown. We know that the 
true gift-giver is a fairy, and therefore invisi- 
ble; and that there is a secret about him 
which we love to guess at. Perhaps we should 
be on the track of it if we could discover the 
reason why he goes his rounds at Christmas 
time. In some such fashion we may hope 



The Spirit of Christmas i2j 

to preserve the lovely myth — our only living 
myth — from desecration, and allow it to play 
its true part in the forming soul of child- 
hood. 

Those of us who hold close for dear life to 
the spiritual realities, who must make them 
living and warm to our consciousness, quickly 
see the need of all such cherishing of whole- 
some faiths. Ah, well we remember the year 
we wore black among the Christmas shop- 
pers! How intolerably our hearts paineci! 
Before our blurred eyes the noisy scene would 
fade and grow silent, giving place to scenes 
we dared not remember, yet could not forget. 
If our list had had one more name upon it, 
how much lighter had been our task ! We 
stepped from the wintry outside world into 
a tropical florist's shop and bought violets to 
set before a little picture on our mantel at 
home, our throats swelling as we thought that 
this was the only gift we could offer. Yet, 
after all, was there ever a time when the 
shopping went so easily, when the things 
we wanted came so straight to our 



124- Every Day Essays 

hands, when the saleswomen were so atten- 
tive, and our fellow-buyers so considerate? 
We saw that, sad as the world might be, it 
was bursting-full of love and kindness. 

No one knows Christmas as it is who does 
not get some such glimpse of the hidden and 
eternal side of it. Dickens has shown us 
this inimitably, of course, but it needs to be 
brought to mind because the cheaper and 
more jovial side of Christmas is thrust at us 
everywhere; and on this side it seems to be 
so entirely a day of merrymaking that we, 
who cannot disburthen our hearts and be 
boisterous, feel ourselves defrauded. Instead 
of the deep human sympathy that should be 
ours we get a sense of self-pity and lose the 
perception of our higher moments that there 
is nothing in life half so dignified and beauti- 
ful as its sorrows. Mere unthinking joy is, 
after all, as Emerson saw, somewhat given to 
barbaric yawps. No one knows the lovely 
outlines of the higher joy except as he sees 
them for a fleeting instant clear-cut and 
radiant against a dark background. The 



The Spirit of Christmas 12^ 

Christmas these deeper moments show us 
holds in its depths a memory of the sufferings 
of the children of Israel and a prophecy of 
a nobler sorrow to come. 

Reflections like these may visit us in the 
quieter hours preceding the twenty-fifth, but 
as the day itself approaches, the opportunities 
for observing its true character grow fewer. 
Flurry marks Christmas eve for its own, and 
we are more likely to be cross than uplifted. 
The stockings, instead of being hung by the 
chimney with care, are safety-pinned to a 
chair-back with an impatient and unsympa- 
thetic " There! Now get to bed, do! " In 
the end the excited children may have to be 
scolded to sleep, and then, after silence falls, 
how sorry we are ! We must finish dressing 
Mary's doll — and the stockings must be filled 
— and we have forgotten the nuts and raisins. 
Goodness ! Does any one suppose the stores 
are closed yet? 

We throw on our wraps, and go without 
our rubbers because we can find only one, 
and nearly fall down the slippery front stairs 



126 Every Day Essays 

in consequence; but we get a whiff of holiday- 
time that repays us, tired as we are, as we 
hurry through the wakeful streets. The crisp 
air sparkles with frost, the arc-lights fizz and 
sputter, the surface cars clang merrily along 
their shining tracks. Theatrical posters and 
illuminated signs grin upon us with insistent 
jollity. Vanishing electric lights wink ro- 
bustly at us, as if openly amused at the ex- 
aggeration of the signs to which they call 
attention, while others whirl in colored circles 
above us with an irresponsible gayety. And 
presently, to our relief, we come upon the 
great department stores, still lifting their 
tiers of brilliantly lighted windows into the 
dark sky like huge conventionalized Christ- 
mas trees. 

Within, the merchants walk the crowded 
aisles like suave spiders sHding down the 
lines of their glittering webs, and looking con- 
tentedly over the hosts of buzzing, preoccu- 
pied human flies. They suck the money 
from our pockets, and then obligingly release 
us, bending under a load of brown-paper par- 



The Spirit of Christmas I2f 

eels, fearful that we have bought the wrong 
things, staggering with fatigue, but, after all, 
thoroughly content to be a part of this mad 
carnival of generosity. 

If we stay up thus till after midnight, tor- 
mented by all the little devils that delight in 
a bustle, our fingers all thumbs, and our 
memories, goaded to an unnatural clearness, 
telling us all sorts of things we ought to have 
thought of sooner but didn't, and don't want 
to think of now; if at last we drop exhausted 
into bed, afraid to look at the clock, it is hard 
to put on a holiday face a few hours later and 
shout, " Merry Christmas " in the dawn. 
The beloved youngsters for whom we have 
performed most of this labor hop into our 
bed, spill pop-corn and nut shells down our 
backs and insist upon our eating candy before 
breakfast. Sticky, happy, wriggly, all talking 
at once at the top of their voices, they are not 
the most satisfactory bedfellows in the world. 
The baby gets excited and cries; the pup 
rushes wildly about and barks, and has to be 
cuffed for eating up the ginger-bread animals; 

9 



128 Every Day Essays 

the father Inquires if any one supposes that 
this is fun ; and the mother tries to quiet the 
baby, put out the pup, mate the stockings, 
fasten buttons, and do her own hair in a 
fashion fit for church, without losing the good 
cheer the occasion dem.ands. 

Absorbed as we are in the children, full as 
our minds have been for weeks of the pres- 
ents we have been providing for others, now, 
when we gather around the glorified tree, 
with its waxen angel swinging on the topmost 
bough, Its gold and silver fruit straight from 
fairy-land, its drapery of snowy pop-corn and 
glittering tinsel, its base lost In a mass of 
white parcels tied with gay ribbons, we care, 
at last, for what we are to have ourselves. 
Memories of past years, when the tree bore 
such weight of joy for us, creep Into our hearts 
and fill us with sweet anticipations. We kiss 
the children a bit absent-mindedly, thanking 
them for their little hat-pins and stick-pins 
and kindergarten pen-wipers, but we wonder 
what the unknown gifts are — we are lured 
astray by the magic possibilities of the mys- 



The Spirit of Christmas i2g 

terious parcels before us. Perhaps at no time 
during the whole trying year is the secret 
soul of us so keenly probed for lingering evils 
as on this day of love. 

We find ourselv^es, for one thing, unexpect- 
edly lacking in common-sense. For are not 
the presents we most enjoy just the ones we 
have not asked for and should never dream of 
buying? We may be properly thankful in 
the days to come for the patent coffee-pot or 
the box of hosiery, but just to-day we do not 
find it easy to give them quite the spontane- 
ous welcome which greets the possibly super- 
fluous but certainly charming presents which 
meet the hidden wishes of our foolish hearts. 
A fur boa, for instance, does not seem half 
so holidaylike as a couple of seats for the 
theatre, or a big box of chocolates. The fact 
that it costs a great deal more and will last a 
great deal longer is just so much dead weight 
to keep us from bubbling gleefully over it, 
as we do over the dear gimcracks designed 
merely for our momentary pleasure. For one 
thing, the useful present is likely to be so 



1^0 Every Day Essays 

very useful that it is bestowed before the holi- 
days, and then, when the Great Occasion itself 
arrives, the most conscientious effort fails to 
make our gratitude effervesce as it ought. 
Perhaps we might as well admit, cheerfully 
and at once, that Christmas is the time for 
superfluities. It is the day for the expression 
of a love so abounding that it provides more 
than we need — so full that it overflows in lit- 
tle laughing joys. Its presents may well be 
like caresses — unnecessary, unsought-for and 
disproportionately precious. 

It is afterward, when the children — and 
ourselves ! — hav^e recovered a little from the 
greed of getting, that the day takes on its 
nobler aspect. Perhaps we get the right at- 
mosphere most surely when we go outside our 
own little circle and give to the neighbor we 
are enjoined to love. We may pack a basket 
with good things for the poor, or carry fruit 
and flowers to the hospital; but the true 
heavenly glow comes when we recognize that 
our neighbor is some one nearer at hand, 
in need of more discriminating help. It is 



The Spirit of Christmas ijr 

easy to give to those destitute poor who have 
passed through such a furnace of sin and 
misery and foohshness that they have har- 
dened back into a primitive condition, and are 
willing to rejoice over bread they have not 
earned, to eat, drink, and be merry, whether 
to-morrow they die or not; but the poor who 
most need us are nearer our own station, piti- 
fully hiding their poverty, whether of love or 
of gold, and standing in need of tact and fine 
sympathy — of spiritual rather than of ma- 
terial gifts. We rise into a heavenly light 
when we minister to them. 

In this light we perceive that the important 
thing, after all, is that we ourselves should 
keep the Christmas spirit. The presents we 
are able to give may be poor and few, and if 
so, then we are called upon for the richest 
gift of all — a gift that He whose birthday 
we keep would not disdain. For to be will- 
ing, with entire sweetness, to give simple grat- 
itude and love when we long to give some 
little dollar's-worth trinket, is to see clearly 
what things are worth while. To give what 



132 Every Day Essays 

we justly may, neither counting nor apologiz- 
ing for the cost, to receive what comes to us 
with a similar ignoring, seeing beneath the 
tinsel disguise the same love that we give in 
return when we simply say thank you, Is to be- 
hold, hidden behind the little waxen image in 
the tree-top, the true great Christmas angel 
blessing all our gifts. Under such benedic- 
tion, we cannot fail to give to those who love 
us the best gift of all — the comfort of seeing 
us serene and blessed, appreciative of every 
effort for our happiness, and oblivious of fail- 
ures and neglects — even of our own. 



Aant Catherine's Busy Day. 



When Aunt Catherine, in order to enable 
her young sister-in-law to attend the annual 
meeting of the Club, agreed to take charge 
of Jamie for the day, she felt herself quite 
competent to the situation. Although her 
maiden estate naturally left her without much 
responsible personal contact with children, she 
was not at all lacking in ideas concerning 
them. She had seen them in public places, 
and had her private opinion of the way they 
behaved. She had several young relatives; 
and, most enlightening experience of all, she 
lived in an apartment house wherein a number 
of children were confined. 

She began operations according to pro- 
gram. She rose early, and had her work 
done, and the pudding for luncheon in the 
oven — a wholesome rice pudding, such as 
little boys ought to eat, with a sprinkling of 
133 



134- Every Day Essays 

raisins and currants by way of enticement — 
all before Jamie arrived. 

" Now, my dear," said she, kindly, but 
firmly, as she took off his wraps, " you and I 
are going to have a long day together, and, I 
hope, a pleasant one. I have put the house in 
good order, and I expect you to help me keep 
it so. We can enjoy ourselves better in a nice 
clean house than in one that is all mixed 
up, can't we? " 

" Donno ! " said Jamie, without enthusi- 
asm. He was studying his aunt's face. 

" Well, we can. Take my word for it. 
There are plenty of ways you can play with- 
out tearing things to pieces." 

" Have you got any little boys and girls? " 
asked Jamie, a bit wildly. His lips trembled. 
So did his aunt's heart. Mercy ! Was he go- 
ing to cry? 

" No, dear, I have no little boys or girls, 
but I have the finest cat you ever saw. Here, 
kitty, kitty, kitty! " 

Jamie permitted himself to be consoled, 
which was fortunate, since just then the elec- 




Sc'L' page IJ4 



AiDif Catherine's Busy Day ij^ 

trie bell burred in the hallway, and a visitor 
was shown into the tiny parlor. Aunt Cath- 
erine, after a glance at the satisfied little boy, 
seated decorously on the window-seat of the 
sitting-room, stroking the cat, went back to 
her guest with an easy mind. They had im- 
portant matters to discuss. There was a pros- 
pect of a change of janitors. A new flat 
building was to be built next door — how 
much light would it cut off ! Young Mr. 
Hyson, in B i6, did not get home the other 
night until after the last hall-boy had locked 
up and gone home; this was the second time 
in a month. Every one was so sorry for poor 
Mrs. Hyson. Occasionally Aunt Catherine's 
mind turned toward her younger guest, and 
once she thought she heard the sound of run- 
ning water. But on the whole she had a 
pleasant visit, and bade her friend good-bye 
in calmness of soul. 

" Jamie, dear, did you get tired of wait- 
ing for auntie? " she inquired in dulcet tones, 
as she shut the outer door. There was no 



136 Every Day Essays 

response ; the sitting-room was empty — where 
on earth was that boy ? 

She looked in every room in turn. As she 
passed the bath-room on her way to the kit- 
chen, a trickle of water creeping under the 
door caught her eye; at the same moment a 
splash and a laugh caught her ear. She 
opened the door. There was Jamie, sitting 
blissfully astride the head of the tub, push- 
ing down the paws and tail of the luckless cat 
as fast as they appeared above the water. 

" Stay down there ! Get a good bath ! " he 
shouted. " Get your footses clean ! Black 
footses ! Shame on you ! " 

Aunt Catherine rescued the cat with one 
hand, and bore Jamie off with the other. She 
carried the cat by the nape of his neck and 
Jamie by the nape of his jacket, and deposited 
them both, dripping, on the kitchen linoleum. 
She did not trust herself to speak — at best, 
language seemed inadequate — and she went 
back to turn off the water, and mop up the 
bath-room floor. 

" I do hope it won't drip down and spoil 



Aunt Catherine's Busy Day /jy 

the ceiling of C 25," she reflected, as she 
worked in frantic haste. " That woman 
would report me at once and never let me 

hear the last of it. I wonder what that " 

(she swallowed) " I wonder what Jamie is 
up to now? " 

She found out soon as she entered the kit- 
chen, though it took her a moment to get her 
bearings and discover the cause of the smoke 
that dimmed her vision and — oh ye gods ! — 
the smell that smote her nostrils ! Through 
the reek she saw the coughing cat on the 
window-sill pressed close against the glass, 
and the intensely interested face of the little 
boy bending over the stove. Her skirts 
swished with the vehemence of her motions 
as she threw open the window, tossed rubber 
bands and other foreign objects off the hot 
stove, and bore away a limp child, hung help- 
less over her hip. 

For a long period thereafter — it seemed 
to him ages long — Jamie sat upon his aunt's 
lap, firmly held in a muscular grip, and lis- 
tened to her opinion of his conduct and her 



ijS Every Day Essays 

prophecies of his future. But at last the im- 
minence of the luncheon-hour released him. 
He was led back to the kitchen, firmly held by 
one hand, and for some minutes dragged from 
stove to sink and china-closet as Miss Cath- 
erine's duties called her. But this soon proved 
too irksome to the elder party — she was not 
so disciplined to the endurance of arbitrary 
discomfort as the younger was — and he was 
placed on a chair near the window and bid 
to watch the few indestructible English spar- 
rows that flew about the court-yard. This 
seemed a safe amusement enough, for the 
window gave on a fire-escape; so that even 
if he leaned out too far and fell, the iron bal- 
cony would catch him. Aunt Catherine, as 
her wont was, fell to on her work, with a 
single mind. 

Five minutes later she was sitting in the 
middle of the kitchen floor, sobbing aloud 
over the recovered boy. Oh! If he had 
fallen! If she had been too late, or her 
trembling grasp had failed ! He seemed to 
think he could fly as well as any of those 



Atmt Catherine's Busy Day 13P 

pesky sparrows — in another second he would 
have been reduced to flying forever, the poor 
little chap ! He was only a baby, after all 
— ^Auntie's baby! Did he want some dinner, 
and some nice rice pudding with raisins in it? 

He sat on her lap at table, his soft curls 
bobbing against her stiff shirt-waist. She fed 
him as if he were six months old, laughed at 
him, talked streams of nonsense at him, 
dropped kisses every now and then on the top 
of his head — behaved just as his mother did. 
Jamie leaned closer, as if he felt at home. 
His vigorous young muscles relaxed. 

"Jamie sleepy!" he murmured, with his 
mouth full. 

" Of course you are, darling! I remember 
now your mother said you always took a nap 
after luncheon. Auntie will carry you. Here 
is a nice cool place, on the sitting-room 
lounge ; you can watch the gold-fish, swim- 
ming round and round, until you go to sleep. 
Auntie will draw the shades — no ? Don't you 
want It dark? Can't see the fish? Very well, 
then, dearie; just as you like. Now, auntie 



T^d Every Day Essays 

is going to wash up the dinner dishes — she'll 
be right here in the next room — oh, no! you 
aren't afraid, such a big boy as you I You 
can see into the kitchen — I'll leave the door 
open — you can hear me rattle the dishes — 
there! don't cry! Does he want his auntie 
to stay by him? Well, auntie will sit here in 
the big chair, then, and perhaps she'll take 
a little bit of a nap herself." 

She didn't expect really to do it, but her 
morning had been one of such unwonted exer- 
tions, and, at the last, of such exhausting emo- 
tions, that she was justly in need of some re- 
pose. Once she glanced over at the little boy, 
breathing peacefully, in the utter abandon of 
trusting childhood, and her heart warmed 
within her. She let herself drift into dream- 
land. 

It was no definite sound that aroused her, 
for Jamie's movements had been wary, but 
rather a sense of impending trouble, a pre- 
sentiment that, It occurred to her afterward, 
must be the chronic state of mind afflicting 
Jamie's mother. Where was he ? Not on the 



'Aunt Catherine's Busy Day /// 

sofa ! Had he gone to the kitchen again, or 
was he playing with the water — ah ! there he 
was, at the table. 

" Jamie, dear, come here to auntie. What 
are you doing — pet! !" She hadn't in- 
tended the last word to be quite so emphatic, 
or to speak it in quite such a tone. She leapt 
toward the fish-bowl, and she hoped she had 
saved Goldie's life. But the poor creature 
looked very much squashed and he floated on 
the top of the water in a most discouraging 
way. 

Aunt Catherine rose to the occasion. Re- 
freshed by her nap she did not hesitate to take 
drastic measures. She bore the boy off to the 
kitchen, and tied him fast in a chair. 

" Now, young man, we'll see if you get 
into any more mischief till I have these dishes 
washed! Aren't you ashamed of yourself 
killing a poor little gold-fish? " 

"Didn't kill him! Just fished him!" 
muttered Jamie. His brow was overcast, his 
jaw underhung. " What are old fishes good 



t^2 Every Day Essays 

for, anyhow, if you can't fish 'em? Wouldn't 
have such a fish ! No good on earth." 

" Tut, tut, tut! " remonstrated Aunt Cath- 
erine. 

" I won't tut! " said Jamie, still rebellious. 
Aunt Catherine took time to think. 

" Little boys shouldn't say won't," said she 
finally. 

" Humph ! I'd like to know what else I'd 
say ! " protested Jamie. 

Silence. 

" What'd you say, now? " he Inquired, in 
a tone of awakening interest. 

Aunt Catherine glanced at the clock. 
Thank Heaven it was verging on four. In 
another hour or so she would be released; 
until then she might as well yield to him. 
It would be a pity to have his memory of the 
day with her all made up of disagreeables. 
It wasn't as If there was a principle at stake, 
She didn't have the daily charge of him; 
she could afford to relax a little. Thus weak- 
ly did she parley with a Puritanic conscience, 
which was, to be sure, a trifle out of training. 




Sec page 146 



Aiint Catherine's Busy Day i^j 

Into the brief space of the following hour 
she crowded the varied experiences of several 
lifetimes. She was first a horse, driven by 
an exacting rider much given to bouncing and 
shouting; and next the engineer of a choo- 
choo train made up of all her parlor and sit- 
ting-room chairs. In this capacity she rang 
her silver table-bell till the tongue fell out, 
while Jamie tooted and puffed in the most 
lifelike manner. In rapid succession there- 
after she essayed the parts of a flying birdie, 
crying peep-peep; an ooh-bear, gutterally 
growling; an old witch; a fairy, with the 
poker for a wand; a doctor, prescribing 
learnedly for a dejected cat wrapped in a 
shawl and held on the sofa by main force; 
and an undertaker presiding over the funeral 
of a dead gold-fish. 

When Jamie's mother arrived, fresh, and 
daintily dressed, Aunt Catherine was too ex- 
hausted to feel more than a languid wonder 
that any one in the world could be so unruf- 
fled and contented. She looked on while 
Jamie was mumbled with kisses, and show- 

10 



14.4- Every Day Essays 

ered with loving words, the while an unwil- 
ling and limp little arm was stuffed into a 
reefer sleeve. Jamie's protests that he didn't 
want to go home, that it wasn't time yet, and 
he wanted to play some more with Aunt 
Catherine, left her cold in spite of the half- 
envious congratulations of the young mother, 
who remarked that the boy must have been 
having the time of his life, and that Aunt 
Catherine must be a wonder with children. 
After the departure of her guests. Miss 
Catherine was too weary to get supper, and 
after a frugal meal of crackers and cold tea^ 
she crept early to bed. Even here she failed 
to rest comfortably, for she dreamed that 
she had married the lover of her youth and 
had six Jamies to take care of. She woke in a 
fright, and looked out into the familiar dark 
of her little bed-room. She felt its loneliness 
close on her with a sense of peace, and slept 
again. 



Types of Childhood. 



She is the roly-poly child of the old-fash- 
ioned story-book — mother's darling, father's 
pet, and the joy of the household. Like 
Lorna Doone, her dimpled elbows leave no 
room for sharp words. Down the middle of 
her forehead she has a little curl, but although 
she can, on occasion, be naughty, she is never, 
by any chance, horrid. Her very mischief is 
endearing, and she takes to spoiling as a duck 
takes to water. Her round young body is 
made for cuddles and kisses, and it is evident 
that she will never miss them. Her appeal 
to the maternal and paternal tenderness is so 
irresistible that through her whole life she Is 
sure to be mothered by all true women and 
cherished and protected by all true men. Al- 
though frankly seeking the sunshine of love, 
like a little human flower she gives it back 
145 



14.6 Every Day Essays 

again in fragrance, her very breath adding to 
the sum of sweetness in the world. 

She lavishes herself whole-heartedly upon 
her doll, forgetting herself in the fond duties 
of motherhood. If, in loyal imitation of her 
elders, she finds it incumbent upon her to pun- 
ish her offspring, the stern frown she musters 
up must struggle to draw her far eyebrows 
together. The deep corners of her mouth, 
little holes full of laughter, draw down in 
obedience to her will, but jerk back into their 
accustomed jollity as soon as she forgets to 
command them. She spanks with a liberal 
fat hand, humanly enjoying the realistic sound 
of the slaps; but when the punishment is 
over, and love free to express itself more nat- 
urally, she takes her rebellious offspring to her 
tender heart again. Hear her as she coos 
and gurgles and comforts, rocking to and fro 
in an ecstasy of forgiveness. There is solid 
satisfaction to be had out of a spanking ad- 
ministered by such a spanker. One can im- 
agine the chastised one screaming luxuriously 
during the operation, all the time aware of 



Types of Childhood i^^ 

the ice-cream and cakes of comfort sure to 
follow. 

Unconscious she is as a child, and uncon- 
scious will she be as a woman, living so en- 
tirely in the love-world that it is only in the 
service of love she even thinks. One sees 
her mother reflected in her every act, and 
knows that her daughter will in turn reflect 
her. For how far into the dim reaches of 
the past does her lineage of sweet-heartedness 
reach, a mercy enduring forever? 

Behold him, the master of all that is and is 
not! Undaunted by knickerbockers and half- 
feminine clothes, he scorns his youth and as- 
serts his manhood. Though his hair will 
snarl, and an unsympathetic mother allows it 
to grow longish, he manages to lessen its 
weakening charms by a systematic ignoring of 
brush and comb. His imagination rises su- 
perior to such trifles as a garterless stocking 
or an unwashed face. He sees himself an 
heroic knight, victorious over darkling foes. 
He rears aloft his triumphant spear with easy 



1^8 "Every Day Essays 

strength, although it bears, impaled on high, 
the struggling form of his victim. His hand 
rests for a moment on the hilt of his trusty 
sword. 

To the making of this hacked weapon how 
many days of very remittent labor went ! For 
he is not a patient nor a very competent work- 
man; his nervous body moves jerkily in re- 
sponse to the constant urging of his tumult- 
uous will, and his imagination dresses the 
crudest product of his labor into all he would 
have it be. 

He has his characteristic list of faults. 
He is passionate, impetuous, self-willed. He 
questions the world about him with thumps 
and thwacks, careless of what he may de- 
stroy. Like a living interrogation mark, he 
rears himself inquiringly upon the smallest 
point of fact, facing eagerly all that has gone 
before, and putting a full stop to further ad- 
vance until he is disposed of. He is restless; 
he demands an exhausting amount of atten- 
tion; he is quite capable of using up, in an 
hour, all the powers of amusement and stores 



Types of Childhood i^g 

of information contained in a large family of 
adults; and then peremptorily demanding 
that he be given something else to do. 

What an example he is of the power of 
mind over matter — he the helpless one, un- 
able to tie his own shoes, who nevertheless 
reproduces the circle of the world's activities 
in a day ! And at night, when he lies asleep, 
you perceive, with accusing pangs, what a 
baby he is, after all, how relaxed and small 
and appealingly weak. It is borne in upon 
you that all this splendid vigor depends upon 
you for permission to be — that without your 
love and protecting tenderness it cannot main- 
tain itself. You kiss gently the begrimed 
little hand that, when the boy is awake, tan- 
talizingly evades your tenderness; and you 
fall on your knees, aware of the insufiiciency 
of your love and patience. 

He is stern justice personified. His chief 
ambition in life is expressed in the aspiration 
of a temporarily crushed young person some 
eight years old, who after a battle in which 



j^o Every Day Essays 

his mother had come off victorious, was heard 
to soliloquize as follows : 

" Well, anyhow, when I grow up I am go- 
ing to get married and have a lot of children 
so I can do some bossing myself! " 

He does his " bossing " with all his might. 
He sets his teeth and uses every muscle in his 
sturdy body. He feels himself every inch a 
Napoleon long before he knows who Na- 
poleon is. He is the terror of his soft-hearted 
mother, who is restrained in the carrying out 
of plans of chastisement by scruples of whose 
existence he knows nothing. He reminds her 
of all the impulsive threats she would fain 
forget, and proves to her, at the top of his 
lungs, that she is ruining the baby. 

One of his sort once had a kicking cow to 
milk, and devised a complete code of disci- 
pline for her management. As he explained, 
he gave her no just cause for such misdirec- 
tion of her energies, but fed her well, and 
watered her, and saw that she had things to 
munch while he milked. He tied her tail 
up out of harm's way, and placed his stool in 



Types of Childhood 151 

exactly the right place when he sat down to 
milk her. Now, If, after all this, she kicked. 
It must be for pure cussedness, he contended, 
and he should deal with it as it deserved. He 
had a strap at hand, armed with a buckle at 
one end. If she kicked gently he gave her 
the unarmed end; if violently, the buckle. 
One kick earned her one blow, and three 
kicks three blows, all nicely proportioned. 
Under this skillful administration of justice 
he argued a steady improvement, though the 
barn floor was still frequently sprinkled with 
milk. He had various reasons for this : once 
it was because the cow, on a certain day, 
wished to avenge herself for an oversight of 
his, and kicked over the milk to spite him. 
The oversight referred to had been his forget- 
ting to untie her tail, and, of course, he gen- 
erously allowed this was Inconvenient for the 
cow, since she had no hands with which to un- 
tie It herself. 

Observe, under all this crude young effort 
at mastery, the fine sense of justice sprouting. 
Even the cow, he recognizes, has her right to 



1^2 Every Day Essays 

resentment when her tail is too long out of 
commission. The little brother who is wise 
enough to perceive this virtue in the midst 
of unpleasantness and to submit meekly to 
this self-appointed dictator finds himself as- 
signed certain rather rigid limits within which 
he may disport himself, these limits being 
well guarded by the big brother against all 
intrusion from without. In this case the small 
boy, after the approved fashion of primitive 
society, yields his freedom in return for pro- 
tection; but the brother who rebels knows 
what it is to struggle with a superior power 
indeed. 

This little brother, howev^er, has as keen a 
sense for the joys of rebellion as the big 
brother for the joys of mastery. Independ- 
ence is the breath of his being, and he resents 
being placed under authority, however just or 
righteously ordained. When his immature 
sense of things tells him that there is a doubt 
of the justice and the righteousness of the 
power placed over against him, then his con- 
stitutional rebelliousness heightens into fury. 



Types of Childhood i^j 

His revolt is amazingly passionate and heed- 
less of consequences, giving him a momentary 
strength beyond his years ; when he comes in- 
to collison with the determined young believer 
in the divine right of elder brothers, quick- 
moving household revolutions may be looked 
for. 

As the elder feels himself a competent 
giant, battling with obstacles worthy of his 
strength, so the younger discovers new powers 
in himself with every tussle. He gets splen- 
did noises out of his lungs; his legs learn to 
kick with varied might; his hitherto helpless 
fists, used chiefly for sucking, know what it 
is to smack into responsive flesh. He will 
soon learn to look forward to the day when 
he will be able to beat his big brother; and 
thus he acquires the art of hoping — of shed- 
ding the light of a coming day upon the over- 
cast present. For him time has begun and he 
has an object in growing. 

Who has not seen her — the child with her 
back turned to the world? It is a sturdy lit- 



154- Every Day Essays 

tie back in conventional clothes of no especial 
style, with regulation pigtails straddling down 
it, and an aspiring knob atop. She does as 
she is bid about as well as the average child; 
cries when she is hurt; plays when she can 
and works when she must — nothing in her 
daily life is unusual or individual, except, per- 
haps, this very lack of individuality. She re- 
sponds to the usual stimuli — praise, blame, 
reward, punishment, curiosity, and the rest — 
in the usual way; but all the while there Is 
a curious elusiveness about her. If she says 
she is sorry for some misdeed, you want to 
shake her to make the admission more intense. 
If an irate interlocutor wants to know what 
on earth she means by a certain course of 
conduct, she hangs her head and is dumb ; 
while the most sympathetic inquiry fails to 
elicit a more satisfactory response. 

You wonder if there really is any conscious 
motive back of the commonplace acts; and 
then, some day, you surprise a look in the 
clear, shallow eyes — are they shallow? Or 
perhaps you wish to recall something which 




See page JS4 



Types of Childhood 155 

evades your utmost effort of memory, and lo ! 
this inattentive, absent child, who seemed to 
know nothing of it at the time, finds her 
tongue and tells it all to you, omitting no 
finest detail. Or you may come upon her in 
a fit of inarticulate and apparently causeless 
weeping, and be amazed at the storm of in- 
coherent reproaches hurled at you. It is an 
awakening indeed, but after the violent dem- 
onstration is over the child retreats again into 
the gray distance, and shuts the door of her 
soul upon you. 

If John Fiske is right In his interpretation 
of the meaning of infancy, what wealth of 
subtle and complex powers, unfolding tardily 
because of their very complexity, does not 
this protracted infancy promise? Rare 
flowers grow thus in silence and obscurity, 
their fairest growth often hedged about with 
thorns, blossoming into glory only after long 
preparation. Weeds spring up smoothly in 
a night. 

Ah, well for the child if she grows where 
she is understood ! — where no mistaken Pur- 



1^6 Every Day Essays 

itanism forces her to a premature and abnor- 
mal conscientiousness; where no tormenting 
anxiety insists upon scanning the hidden 
processes of her being; where no vulgar emu- 
lation strives to force her into competition 
with mediocrity! Like a sleeping baby, she 
needs silence, and dimness, and a watchful 
but undisturbing tenderness. Well for her 
if sweet lullabies, vague and rhythmical, haunt 
her long sleep, and if when she at last awakes 
she looks with wonder into eyes full of quiet 
welcome. A Sleeping Beauty indeed, all her 
world asleep about her, Nature alone at work 
in the luxuriance of unchecked growth, who 
shall be the happy Prince who breaks through 
the encompassing wilderness, knows her for 
the Princess, and wakes her with the kiss of 
understanding love ? 

THE END. 



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